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Time has not lately been my friend. I'm way behind on reading. I've got stacks of books here, begging for attention. I've got books behaving (for all the world to see) like furniture.

A few days ago I began to read the big book of the moment, an adult novel that has received every manner of acclaim, both from the prize givers and the lists. I wanted to love this book. I'd spent good hardcover money on it after all (something I thought about, something I must consider), and my friends were (mostly) enthralled. I chose it from the overwhelming pile, and I tried, believe me, I tried. Between sheets of baking cookies. While my husband watched Alaska shows. While I waited for the food shopping crowds to thin. I tried. I read. I tried.

Dutifully, I read. The story was important; I felt that on every page. But oh, those sentences. So relentlessly declarative. So devoted to moving the plot along at such a feverish pace that characters felt far more like symbols than people and scenes felt more like stage sets and philosophy felt stylized, rushed.

The book was an idea. But was it a book? And what kind of snob am I, to be asking such a question about a novel of what will be enduring prestige?

Had I, in the rush of my real life, in the daily swell of recommendation letters, bill writing, house cleaning, research, present wrapping, food buying, novel writing, forgotten how to read?

I needed to find out. I needed to get up early (this very morning) and reach for another book and determine whether I had lost my readerly touch, my patience, my gratitude for stories on the page. I chose Everywhere I Look, the new essay collection by the Australian Helen Garner. I opened up. I took a breath. I settled.

I settled and swelled. It took just a single page to believe in books again.

"When I was in my forties I went on holiday to Vanuatu with a kind and very musical man to whom I would not much longer be married, though I didn't know it yet," Garner writes—the fist lines of the first essay, "Whisper and Hum." She hates the tropics, she tells us, in the very next sentence, then:

And what I hated most was the sight of a certain parasitic creeper that flourished aggressively, bowing the treetops down and binding them to each other in a dense, undifferentiated mat of choking foliage. I longed to be transported at once to Scotland where the air was sharp and the nights brisk, and where plants were encouraged to grow separately and upright, with individual dignity.

Can't you just see it? Don't you marvel at how she chooses to introduce herself? As almost not married, as oppressed by density, as longing for sharp air and dignity?

I'm halfway through this collection now. I'll write more of it in the January edition of Juncture Notes, our memoir newsletter. I'm just here, on this blog, to say, Thank you, Helen Garner. Thank you, very much. For shaping and breaking and delineating your life in ways that bring about a pleasant startle.

Finally, a word on the photo: That is a photo I took in Berlin, a city for which we mourn over this holiday weekend, a city I came to love during my travels there and during my subsequent research for the Berlin novel, Going Over. We keep getting our hearts broken out here by losses, individual and obscene, suffered at the hands of cruel ideology. We don't know what to say. We remember the wild beauty of a place shedding a dark history and hope for that wild beauty to carry forward, while those who have been lost are remembered widely.

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I have spent this day in two ways only: At an early hour I Skyped with Ms. Tina Hudak and the young men of St. Albans Lower School of Washington about freedom, walls, inspiration, and building scenes and fictional time during a phenomenal conversation inspired by my Berlin Wall novel, Going Over. I was deeply impressed with those young men. With their recognition, among other things, that whether a wall is metaphorical or physical, it counts. It separates. It divides.

The rest of the day I have been writing my column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, finding it particularly challenging, this time around, to say just what I wanted to say. I fought with words until the words gave in and, at last, relinquished story.

Just as I was completing that work, news came in via Twitter of a GuysLitWire review of This Is the Story of You. The review, written by author and critic Colleen Mondor, is an absolute masterpiece of writing about writing, and I am so deeply taken by the artistry of it.

Taken by it.

Grateful for it.

On a day when words came slow to me, Colleen's words arrived as a salve. This is a deepest kindness.

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Yesterday, as part of this week-long teaching at the Rosemont College Writers & Readers Retreat, Carla Spataro asked me questions about themes (and food) and then invited me to read. I chose to share what I think of as postcards from my books—the opening words from stories—Small Damages, Going Over, One Thing Stolen, This Is the Story of You, Flow—that take place around the world.

The video captures some of that. I am grateful for the conversation.

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Yesterday, bitterly cold from all the bitter cold, I stopped briefly at the Thirtieth Street Station bookstore while en route to my first day at Penn. There I was greeted with a tower of books featuring Ted Koppel, Chelsea Clinton, and me (Love). Everyday, ordinary company? For me, not really.

Later, at the Penn Bookstore, I was searching for something else when I discovered all these Handling the Truth's (Handlings of Truth?) beside Mary Karr's much-publicized The Art of Memoir (about which I'd had so many (politely stated) concerns).

Last week I heard from a kind soul who had found Going Over at a train station in Germany.

My point being: We write and then we let our words and stories go. We can't do a whole lot about what happens after that, except to be happily surprised when we're discovered (or when we discover ourselves).

Speaking of books, submissions have now closed for the This Is the Story of You giveaway. I'll have some news about that later today.

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Yesterday, amidst much corporate work, three things happened:

I learned that Going Over, my 1983 Berlin Wall book, has officially launched as a paperback, and I thank Chronicle Books for its faith in this story. (And the darling Taylor Norman, for tweeting the news.)

I learned (again from Taylor, who has so steadfastly supported this book) that This Is the Story of You has gone to print, with its gorgeous jacket and incredibly generous quotes from Dana Reinhardt, Tim Wynne-Jones, and Margo Rabb (and its Junior Library Guild citation).

I talked to Danielle Smith, who (in a matter of days) read the middle grade novel I've lately been obsessed with, said so many reassuring things, talked with me about some decisions I'd have to make as I refined the story, and said yes to representing me. I have known Danielle for almost as long as I have been writing for younger readers. The popular force behind the beloved There's a Book blog, Danielle has read my stories, always. She has supported me in a multitude of ways—throwing blog parties, walking the floor of the BEA with me, calling just to talk, listening as I worked through ideas. A few years ago, Danielle launched a career as an agent and today, as a member of Red Fox Literary, she is seeing her authors receive raves and stars, foreign sales, and success at hoped-for houses. I've always been happy to call Danielle my friend. I'm incredibly happy to be taking this step forward into the land of Middle Grade with her.

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Today, on HuffPo, I'm reflecting on the European Migrant Crisis—and on a primary theme, the Turkish guest workers, that sparked the writing of my Berlin Wall novel, Going Over (Chronicle Books).


The entire piece can be found here.

A brief excerpt, from the end of the piece, below:

When I set out to write my 1983 Berlin Wall novel, Going Over (Chronicle Books, 2014), I thought my research would primarily take me to the divided lives of those on either side of the wall. To the failed attempts at freedom. To the successful passages. To the lives of graffiti artists and stymied stargazers.

I found that. I wrote that. But there was something more, something bigger at the heart of this Berlin story -- the lives of the Turkish immigrants, those "guest workers," who had been called to West Berlin to help mitigate a rising labor problem in the wake of the war. Vaccinated, packed onto planes and trains, and redirected to worlds they couldn't foresee, these Turkish citizens left often-rural homes to become poorly paid semi-skilled laborers on German assembly lines. They were crammed into ghettoized apartments, left to their own societal devices, sometimes despised. Those who sought protection from German police -- women, mostly, seeking to escape abusive marriages or challenging conditions or threats of "honor" killings--were often foiled in their search for help. The Turkish immigrants were resident foreigners. They were a culture within a country, both separate and essential.

This Turkish story, it seemed to me, was as resonant, as relevant, as supremely timely as the story of walls and divisions and political strikes against family life. It contained lessons that even today disrupt ideas about German identity and about diversity -- anywhere, in any country. It had to be written about, to stand beside the better-known Wall story.

Those who are fleeing ravaged homes in Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere know only that which they are leaving. They cannot imagine what is next -- who will help them, who will open doors, who will allow them to maintain their dignity. As governments, agencies, and families all around the world watch the exodus in horror and with broken hearts, it becomes an urgent matter to also imagine what happens next.

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Yesterday, thanks to the generous invitation of Gretchen Haertsch, I spent time with the talented writers of Arcadia University's Creative Writing Summer Weekend in the sensational "castle" illustrated above. I taught a master class. I then reflected on the empathetic imagination as I read from my four Tamra Tuller novels—Small Damages, Going Over, One Thing Stolen, and the upcoming This Is the Story of You.

(Thank you, my friends, for coming to see me. Thank you, Soup and Aimee, for the fireside chat.)

In the master class I was focused on the osmotic process I alluded to here. We undertook linked exercises designed to help the writers diagnose their strengths and fears and to help them locate new wellsprings of ideas and possibilities. One element in the lesson plan involved character development. I presented the writers with a number of character-invoking questions. I invited them to add to the question list. We next considered which three or four questions sparked the respective imaginations of each writer. Characters and creatures emerged.

I was asked if I might share the list of provoking questions and so I do, below. Perhaps a handful will inspire you.

Character Invokers

How does it interact with reality?
In what kind of weather does it thrive?
What kinds of arguments does it have?
What secrets has it shared with no one?
What questions does it chase?
What is its shoe size?
How does it deal with crisis?
Where does it find peace or solace?
How does it exercise its curiosity?
How does it greet or ignore the skies?
What does it miss?
What will it stand up for?
What would it change about itself?
Who are its heroes?
Does it dance, and if it does, to what music?
What songs was it sung when it was young?
Does it seek to be rooted in or to escape?
Does it crave lonesomeness?
Does it have faith in another day?
If it were colorblind would it be heartbroken?
What is its favorite word?
Who and what does it trust?

And from the writers:

What haunts it?
What is its least favorite vegetable?
What sense would it most not like to lose?
What does it value more than its own life?
How far would it go to achieve its goal?
Who or what gives it meaning?
Where would it like to travel?
Is it experiencing an existential crisis?
Is it afraid of crowds?
What makes it hopeful?
Does it like water?
What superpower does it wish for?
Where is it from?
How was it raised?
Does it long for the past or dream of the future?
Did it sleep last night?
What is its greatest fear?
What does it fear of the future?
What is its favorite color?

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On this day, ahead of a predicted storm, I'm happy to share these three images—snapshots of books living forward.

Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir will be released in a month or so by Avery—its fourth printing—with a newly crafted afterword (featuring some of the newly read memoirs and evolving memoir theories I've had since Handling was first released in August 2013).

Going Over will be released by Chronicle as a paperback in November, following a happy run as a hardback (thank you, kind librarians, teachers, readers).

Small Damages has just been released by Speak (Penguin Random House) in its second edition paperback—slightly different packaging, same story, and much gratitude to those who found and read the book either as a Philomel hardback or a first-edition Speak paperback.

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On June 27th, I'll be joining Gretchen Haertsch at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA, as part of the Creative Writing Summer Weekend. I'll be conducting a private master class for the participants. I'll also be doing a public reading—a medley that will begin with some thoughts about the empathetic imagination and then move into four brief illustrative readings from Small Damages, Going Over, One Thing Stolen, and This Is the Story of You, the book that will launch next spring from Chronicle (and that I am page proofing this very weekend).

The doors are open to all of you. The reading is free. The facts below. Would love to see you there.

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I was away and when I went away, I went away from myself as a writer—extracted myself from the pressures, the confusions, the fears. I read the work of others instead. Walked hours every day through crooked streets with a heavy camera taking photos of places, of faces, of fashion. Ate gelato at any hour. Learned the history of the Polish people, spent time in Schindler's Factory, visited (with a hushed heart) Auschwitz and Birkenau, walked the grounds of Wawel Castle, happily trekked through a dragon's den, and less happily endured the terror of an underground cave with shoulder-wide passageways. Spent beautiful, wonderful, thirtieth anniversary time with the husband who has taken to calling me (I can't imagine why), "Miss Daisy."

(The other husband just calls me "Beth.")

But I had much to do when I returned, and today I've been taking care of some of that business. There's a new afterword to write for Handling the Truth. Proof pages of Love: A Philadelphia Affair to read through. A review of a favorite author's book to write. Final preparations for this weekend's events at the Bethlehem Area Public Library and the Moravian Writers' Conference. (Join us for the keynote. We would love to see you.) When you go away and then return everything is seen from a new angle. I am aware always, and especially now, of how hard getting writing right is, and how much more I have yet to learn.

While away, I heard from dear Taylor Norman at Chronicle Books that the e-book version of Going Over—as well as ten other Chronicle books—can now be purchased for $1.99 during the next two weeks. The link to that fabulous opportunity is here.

I also learned about two kind reviews of One Thing Stolen—the first by my dear friend Florinda, who reads with such extreme care and who writes with such authority. Thank you, Florinda, for these original, knowing, thoughtful, generous words. You have been such a faithful, important reader of my books. You have understood my purpose.

The second review, posted on the Once Upon a Bookcase blog, is here. I cherish this review because it is written by a reader who wasn't quite sure, when she heard that Nadia was a thief, that this book would be for her. She gave it a chance anyway. And I am grateful.

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I write YA books; that is true. But I never write strictly and only of teens. I care about the sweep of generations. I think generations are relevant. Some of my very favorite characters are women even older (believe it!) than me. My Mud Angel and physician Katherine of One Thing Stolen. Stefan's East Berlin grandmother in Going Over. Old Carmen, the rugged beachcomber, of This Is the Story of You (due out next spring). And, of course, my Estela, the old Spanish cook in Small Damages—a character I lived with for a decade before she found herself inside that gorgeous cover.

But now look at the silver wing near the right upper edge of that cover. That is Estela herself, who came to me this afternoon by way of my husband's cousin, Myra. Estela in real life was my husband's father's mother—a loved, buoyant, life-affirming General Counsel in the United States who had also served as the Philippine ambassador to Portugal. I wear her ring as my engagement ring. I hear stories. And today I received this bookmark, which once clipped the pages of the books Estela read.

Myra's words (in impeccable handwriting):

This is an antique silver bookmark from El Salvador my grandmother Estela picked up—probably 50 years ago.... I decided it was time to send you this now. I always thought this should go to you—since you are the writer in the family and it came from William's home country.

 I am so in love with this gift. This piece of then. A bookmark shaped like a coffee bean that might as easily mark my third memoir about my marriage to this Salvadoran man, Still Love in Strange Places.

I thank you, Myra.

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The annual Little Flower Teen Writers Festival is a school-wide celebration of writing and reading—a marvel of an invention in which a school, on a sunny Saturday, opens its doors to story weavers and student hearts. The dynamic, unstoppable Sister Kimberly Miller leads the way. Her girls wouldn't be anywhere else. And yesterday all of us who were in attendance were given keynote words from A.S. King that leapt us to our feet (yes, that's a deliberate inversion of language logic, but that's so what happened). King is one of those writers who has earned her status as a star. Her stories are essential. Her sentences are prime. And when she gets up there behind a microphone she has something actual to say—words that belong to her, ideas unborrowed.

I left Little Flower, rushed home, put on a skirt, swapped out my graffiti boots for a pair of four-inch heels, picked up the cake I'd made the day before, and headed out again to celebrate the career of Greg Djanikian, the exquisite Armenian poet whose life and work I profiled in the Pennsylvania Gazette last year. Greg is stepping down from full-time administrative duties at Penn so that he might write more and live less bounded-ly. Saddened as we are by the thought of seeing him less, last night was anything but a sad event. It brought together (in true Greg fashion) the teachers, writers, and student advocates who give Penn's creative writing program and Kelly Writers House their aura. Oysters, sherbet-colored shirts, an undaunted cat. Talk about food carts, the meaning of words, 1960, serial memoirists (the third Fuller), astonishing turns in storied careers, the art of the frittata, and the costs and high rewards of loving students. Sun when we arrived and stars when we left.

In between the two events, Kit Hain Grindstaff sent word of something wholly unforeseen—a Guardian review of Going Over. It begins like this below and can be read in full here.

Lyrical prose, beautiful and sensual imagery, a dark setting; yet, hope: there is always hope – because for the stars to shine, there needs to be darkness. Going Over just shot to my 'favourites' of 2015 list and I regret nothing. This book is graffiti, and colour and play dough and bikes. It is love, it is death, it is life; it is astronomy, maps, escapes and archery. It is a wall, splitting the earth with dark and hateful ideologies, and it is a spring in your step on one side: pink hair and coloured moles with a quiet and thoughtful being on the other; scope in hand, love clenched in heart and freedom circling though mind. Going Over is Ada and Stefan, Savas and Meryem, Turks and Germans and kids and adults. It is a story of humans and their plight in this world, and it is a story of love.

As is perhaps clear in this recent Huffington interview, I've been thinking a lot of late about what happiness is. I wrote toward that in today's Philadelphia Inquirer story, which has Frenchtown, NJ, as its backdrop. (Thank you Kevin Ferris and your team for another beautiful presentation of my photographs and words.) I've been also thinking a lot about kindness (never simple, often rare), thanks in part to George Hodgman's glorious memoir Bettyville, which I reviewed for the Chicago Tribune, here.

Today there is sun out there, flowering trees, wet-headed daffodils. I'm going to celebrate by finishing the fabulous Between You and Me (Mary Norris) and later checking into Chanticleer garden for the first time this year. I'm way overdue for a visit.

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I suppose, as with books, there can only be one single beginning to a blog post. The problem here is that I don't know which beginning to choose.

I could start with my introduction to Elizabeth Hand, through my friend Collen Mondoor—Read Illyria, Colleen whispered, and I did. I wrote of it here.

My appreciation for that book and its author fueled a friendship with Liz, so much so that once, too long ago, this Maine-besotted writer traveled all the way to Philly on book tour and spent some time with me. We walked the parking lot of a strip mall on a rainy day. Up and back. Up and back. The rain in our hair. It could have gone on all day.

Then Liz went back to her world and I to mine. I knew that she was working on a book that mattered deeply to her—a book that had her hero, Arthur Rimbaud, at its heart. I knew that she was studying the man, translating his poetry, finding a way to make this French poet of the late 19th century come alive (this young genius declared a genius by the genius Patti Smith) for teen readers today. I knew about the project, but mostly what Liz and I began to write of then were our lives off the pages—hers in her rural world, mine in suburbia. Lives. This is what we spoke about.

So here is another beginning. A week or so ago, a padded envelope appeared at my front door—a gift from the Viking editor Sharyn November. We'd been talking about books that matter. I was naming titles, she was naming titles, we were having the kind of conversation two lovers of books have; it was that simple. Here, in this envelope, were books that Sharyn loved. There, in the mix, was Elizabeth Hand, her Rimbaud book, Radiant Days.

Which I finished reading this morning—a smile on my face. For Liz has done it, found a way to tell this story about a renegade poet of the 1870s and a 1978 painter, also renegade, who has dropped out of Corcoran to find her way. She's armed herself with cans of spray paint.

Time melts for these two characters. They meet—and Liz makes it believable. Washington, DC, and Paris bend, and the scenes are impeccably drawn, believable. Uniting the two is a former rock star named Ted Kampfert, a homeless guitarist who says, among so much else, "Magic isn't something you do. It's something you make. And if you don't make something and leave it behind, it's not just that it's gone. You're gone."

This book, Liz Hand, is magic made.

Here is Merle, musing on the wonder of this otherworldly collision with Arthur Rimbaud:

I wasn't sure what had changed—if Arthur's presence had somehow altered the sidewalks and back alleys around us, the way his poem had shaken something loose inside of me, something I couldn't articulate and maybe couldn't even paint: not so much a different way of seeing the world as a different way of feeling it. Maybe because when I was with him, I didn't need to explain who I was; maybe because he seemed even more out of place in the streets of Georgetown than I was. With him, I felt the way I did when I gazed at The Temptation of Saint Anthony—as though the world held a secret that I was on the verge of discovering. 

Here is part of the world they inhabit, during their one glorious burning night:

Behind the Dumpster a narrow alley wound between an overgrown hedge and a brick wall, so encrusted with ivy it was like burrowing into a green tunnel. Moonlight seeped through the tangled branches overhead, and there was a pallid yellow glow from the upper windows of a nearby row house. After twenty feet or so the alley widened into a tiny courtyard surrounded by buildings in varying stages of decay. Cracked flagstones covered the ground, along with dead leaves and several plastic chairs that had blown over. Small tables were pushed against the rear of a warehouse, its windows boarded shut. A tattered CLOSED sign flapped from a door chained with a padlock.

Note: I might have also launched this blog post with the news that I had been holding, in my hands, another graffiti novel. I don't know how many of them there are, but Merle, Liz's contemporary character, has herself a mean tag (Radiant Days) and glorious command of color and meaning. I wished, as I read Liz's powerful graffiti passages, that my Ada (of Going Over) could time warp and meet Liz's Merle. That they could stand together and talk about art and about the people who are missing from their lives.

Because, in meeting Merle, I know that I am also meeting, anew, Liz Hand—a brilliant woman whose life has been seeped in art and Rimbaud and who makes unusual and therefore lasting books because she (and this is rare) can.

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The only thing benign about Herman Koch's The Dinner is the title—which, like almost everything else about the story, is designed to throw the reader off. "My Dinner with Andre" this is not. Politics, culture, morality, and childrens' lives are at stake (only the first three were at stake in the movie). The questions: What would we do to protect a child who has committed a heinous act? What would we do if we had somehow (implicitly, explicitly) encouraged or modeled or genetically produced an evil creature? Who do we love and why do we love them and what does familial happiness look like? At what cost, secrets?

All this unfolds over the course of a meal in an expensive restaurant. Two brothers and their wives have come to High Civility to discuss a horrific, seamy event. Paul, whose jealousy and creepiness are transparent from the start, tells us the story. He tells us who he is, even as he repeatedly cautions that many parts of the tale are not our business.

It's a brutal, brilliant book (compared to Gone Girl, I think it greatly supersedes it). It's not the kind of book I typically read, it oozes with contemptible people and scenes, but I was riveted by Koch's ability to see his vision through—so entirely relentlessly. And then I got to the paperback's extra matter and an essay by Koch himself called "The First Sentence."

For me, a book is already finished once I've come up with the first sentence. Or rather: the first two sentences. Those first two sentences contain everything I need to know about the book. I sometimes call them the book's "DNA." As long as every sentence that comes afterward contains that same DNA, everything is fine.

Koch's first two sentences, in case you are wondering, are: "We were going out to dinner. I won't say which restaurant, because next time it might be full of people who've come to see whether we're there." And absolutely, yes. The entire book is bracketed within them.

I believe in the power of first sentences, too. I think about them as setters of mood and tone. I wondered, though, whether I could say, about any of my novels, that the entire story rests within the first two sentences. I decided to conduct a mini-experiment. I grabbed a few books from my shelf. Opened to page one. Conducted a self-interview and assessment. I had to cheat in one place only (Dr. Radway), where more than two sentences were required. Otherwise, I'm thinking Koch is onto something here. (And if it is true for my books, I suspect it is true for yours, too.)

From within the fissure I rise, old as anything. The gravel beneath me slides. — Flow

Once I saw a vixen and a dog fox dancing. It was on the other side of the cul-de-sac, past the Gunns' place, through the trees, where the stream draws a wet line in spring. — Undercover

In the summer my mother grew zinnias in her window boxes and let fireflies hum through our back door. She kept basil alive in ruby-colored glasses and potatoes sprouting tentacles on the sills. — House of Dance

There are the things that have been and the things that haven't happened yet. There is the squiggle of a line between, which is the color of caution, the color of the bird that comes to my window every morning, rattling me awake with the hammer of its beak. — Nothing but Ghosts

What I remember now is the bunch of them running: from the tins, which were their houses. Up the white streets, which were the color of bone. — The Heart Is Not a Size

 From up high, everything seems to spill from itself. Everything is shadowed. — Dangerous Neighbors

My house is a storybook house. A huff-and-a-puff-and-they'll-blow-it-down house. — You Are My Only

The streets of Seville are the size of sidewalks, and there are alleys leaking off from the streets. In the back of the cab, where I sit by myself, I watch the past rushing by. — Small Damages

There was a story Francis told about two best friends gone swimming, round about Beiderman's Point, back of Petty's Island, along the crooked Delaware. "Fred Spowhouse," he'd say, his breath smelling like oysters and hay. "Alfred Edwards." The two friends found drowned and buckled together, Spowhouse clutched up tight inside Edwards's feckless arms. — Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent

We live with ghosts. We live with thugs, dodgers, punkers, needle ladies, pork knuckle. — Going Over

If you could see me. If you were near. — One Thing Stolen

Sidenote: In every case, the first two sentences of my books existed within the book in draft one. Sometimes they weren't posted right up front in early drafts. But they always eventually got there.

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Yesterday, Lara Starr of Chronicle Books wrote to share the news that GOING OVER was included in the BCCB Holiday Gift Guide, news I read while giving a very old friend a tour of the Penn campus. The entire list is worth reading, for those of you who are still in shopping mode.

(Buy books from real bookstores! Please!)

This morning, Twitter delivers this incredibly gorgeous and smart review of the book that defined, for me, much of my writing and teaching year. These are words only Colleen Mondor—author, publisher, critic, woman deeply invested in history—could write. I share a final paragraph, but every single word she writes, the perspective she yields about this period, and the photo she used to headline her review matter to me. They put a tear on my face this morning.

Going Over is a teen novel of far bigger ideas than most I have come across. The setting is brilliant and the split narrative, between Ada and Stefan, provides readers with a close look at just how different Berlin became after the split. (Which also makes the reunification that much more impressive.) There are so many novels set during WWII, while the Cold War remains stubbornly overlooked. I'm thus delighted with what Kephart has done here and find these characters, in their decidedly European setting, to be different in the best way. It's a thought provoking title with exceedingly likeable characters and a great ending; all of which make Going Over a winner.

So many thanks, Colleen, and BCCB, and all those who believed in Berlin, and in me, this year. You allow me to keep dreaming forward in ways I'll never adequately explain. To keep writing these small books that take these big risks and hope to find readers who will willingly enter these worlds.

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The Chronicle catalog is so entirely riveting that one could put a bow on it and tuck it under a tree.

So that it wasn't until several minutes into my perusing that I happened upon this page, for the forthcoming One Thing Stolen, which is, I think (and I have nothing to do with this) so very beautifully done.

And so to those who develop surprise taglines, to those who tuck existing books beside coming books, to those who find the central questions of a story and lodge them right there, for catalog readers to see, thank you: You do exquisite work.

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What an honor it was to join Jennifer Lynn, host of National Public Radio's Morning Edition, at the WHYY studios in Philadelphia. We were talking about the Berlin Wall and the conversations I've been having with students at Science Leadership Academy, Downingtown West, Masterman, and Radnor High about freedom, risks, and responsibilities.

The Berlin Wall is down, but what walls still stand?

Would you risk it all for freedom?

Do you know what you desire?

Given a wall and some cans of paint, what mark would you leave behind?

Given a page, what poem would you write?

What matters most in our lives?

I loved the students I met, the stories they told me, the deep respect these students clearly have for those who nurture and teach them. I am incapable, often, of fully articulating just what my interactions with students and their beautiful librarians and teachers mean to me. Jennifer and Joe Hernandez were exquisitely kind to invite me onto their show and to work with me so that we might tell this story succinctly.

The story will air this morning at 7:45 AM. More on the work of these students and the experience can be found here:

On Teaching the Berlin Wall
At Science Leadership Academy: the Huffington Story
At Downingtown West: poems and graffiti art
At Masterman High: poems and graffiti art 
At Radnor High: poems and graffiti art
At Radnor High: photographic outtakes
Common Core Aligned Teacher's Guide
Please go here to read the teacher's guide for Going Over, a Berlin Wall novel

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Once again, the Chronicle team has done an exquisite job of creating a teacher's guide.

This time the guide was created in support of One Thing Stolen, a story about dangerous obsessions, an Italian city, an historic flood, and hope, due out in April 2015 (more on the book here). We'll be posting a live link soon. This, above, is just a fragment. It moves me deeply to think of someone giving a book such close attention, pondering its heart and lessons, and crafting (and designing) a guide this lovely.

The teacher's guide to Going Over, another Chronicle masterpiece, can be found here.

Thank you, Jaime Wong and Chronicle Books.

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Earlier today I traveled to the gorgeous WHYY building in Old City to talk with Jennifer Lynn, gracious host of WHYY FM's Morning Edition, about the students I've been meeting during my Berlin Wall talks.

I'll share a link when the segment goes live. Between now and then, my thanks to Radnor High and those who snapped these photos of our Friday conversation.

And my great thanks to Jennifer and Joe.

(And Ellen T!)

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At Radnor High, I was hosted by the exquisite Michelle Wetzel and Fran Misener and that most fabulous Molly Carroll Newton (of Radnor Memorial Library). There were brownies, pretzels, sandwiches. There were students who had much to say, teachers who made room for the session, a vibrant and vast library world. There was a story about a family member who lost his life in East Berlin because he would not relinquish his bicycle to the guard. There were healthy debates about risks and choices. There were the kinds of conversations that leave a happy buzz inside my head.

The art above is by Fran Misener, one of my hosts for the day. (I so love this.)

The poem below is by Eun-Soo Park, who leads the book club at Radnor High and who had me sign his copy of Going Over for a friend who was off on a field trip that day. She really wanted to meet you, he said. So I think I should give the book to her.  (I so love that.)

Eun-Soo wrote:

The Cost of Freedom

Waiting with words trapped within 
Ready to burst with irrepressible emotion
Unable to make a choice
For fear of stumbling into regret.
Bonds broken, lives at stake,
Stuck with a feeling of stasis.

Time passes.
Every second, a wasted opportunity.
What stops a fleeting rush toward freedom?
The danger, the worry, the risk of death.
But what really hinders the dreams of life
Is believing that one can exist without freedom.

Jake wrote as well. I share his words here as emblematic of many of the wonderful words the students of Radnor High produced during our time together:

The promised land is a distant light,
A chasm, deep and dark.
Too wide to see where it ends
Crossable, but with a steep cost.
The fear of the unknown: the final barrier.

My work with these students is not done. My pleasure is ongoing.

Finally, Ms. Wetzel gave me a gift of air which also turned out to be (surprise) a pair of air-colored earrings. I believe that it was those very earrings that got me through a long ride and a final river talk yesterday. Michelle, you were there with me.

(I so love that.)

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Today I'll return to Radnor High, where I learned the periodic table, Algebra 2, Shakespeare, poetry and a little something about people.

I'll be talking about Going Over and the Berlin Wall.

I'll also be remembering the Beth of long ago and the Beth of 2010, who stood with the great filmmaker Lee Daniels and others celebrating the school that partly shaped us.

I am deeply grateful that so many Radnor alums have returned to my world in recent years. I continue to learn from them.

With thanks to Molly Carroll Newton, Michelle Wtezel, Fran Misener, and Ellen Tractenberg.

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Can we give it up this morning for Sister Kim of Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls? Who has ignited her students with a love for stories. Who drives them to their super stars. Who gives them book projects that yield stunning results. Who makes videos that make writers cry. Who puts together a massive and massively successful Little Flower High School Teen Writers & Readers Festival.

(Look for the 2015 festival on April 18, 2015, when I will join a fantastic cast of area writers for a day of workshops, panels, and signings.)

Who writes to me last night to say that 42 copies of Going Over have arrived at her classroom and will be taught this spring.

Who tags me this morning to say:

Going Over is on the 2015 Tayshas Reading List. This was a dream I had. But. I hadn't dared to dream it fully.

Props. To Sister Kim. To the so-generous TAYSHAS committee. To Chronicle Books, whose glorious team members have opened more doors for me than any publishing house ever.

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I took the story of the Berlin Wall to Philadelphia's academic magnet school, Masterman—meeting with the students of two exquisite and clearly well-respected history teachers, Liz Taylor and Janel Vecsi.

In the Spring Garden neighborhood, inside a circa-1876 building that has inspired filmmakers and hosted President Obama, we talked about risks, responsibilities, and choices. I met students with a personal tie to East Berlin. Students who knew history and the world around them. Students who watch the news out of curiosity and not out of an assignment. Students who work extremely hard at school and at home—and excel. Students who willingly make art and share it. We hear about the terrible struggles of the School District of Philadelphia. We meet and write about the teachers who work so hard under difficult circumstances. Then we hang out with the students themselves and are (again) reminded how important this teaching enterprise is, how necessary it is to get it right, for them.

I came home with a fat file of graffiti art and poetry. What do you want that you do not have? I'd asked the students, after sharing Wall stories, playing Bruce Springsteen, reading from Going Over. What separates you from your dreams or those you love? What is the cost of desire? What are the consequences of change? What are the lessons of the Wall?

And student after student thoughtfully answered. A mere sampling:

I know why the caged bird sings
because I am that caged bird.
My wings are clipped,
my legs are tied,
yet, I will still warble in
this dark, pressing night.
I will walk up to this barrier,
this solid thing that embodies
all forms of constriction.
I don't care, I will fly,
my ropes are loosening,
my wings are growing.
The bird knows its risks.
Yet it flies, it flies.
The bird has one
thing that I cannot attain:
freedom.
Freedom is on the other side.
Will I jump?
I know why the caged bird sings.
He's telling me to jump.
*

It's safe to stay where I am.
That's what people say, at least.
It's too risky
To risk the distance,
Defy the borders.
Your life is fine here, easy.
But I don't live to feel fine.
I live to feel alive.
To do what I want to do.
To pursue freedom.
To chase my own dreams.
I don't live to listen to washed-up lyrics
Written by tyrants.
I live to dream.
To dance.
To dare.
*

Walls separate
Mentally, physically, emotionally...
On one side, ideals.
The other, truth.
People have ideals,
A set mind on how they
Want to live.
But then there is the truth.
How they are living ...
If there ideal is their truth
There would be no wall.
*

The cost of desire is terror—
the Terror you feel when change occurs,
when it does not turn out the way you thought.
like you wanted it to.
You do not know what answer you will get.
What feelings you will have.
What the long-term outcome will be.
But you try and you try
And you hope change will go your way.
*

Walls.
They protect but also confine.
They keep out the bad but
also the good.
They protect us from the outside world
but also block us from the outside.
So break down the walls
and let yourself free.
Because the walls can't protect you forever.
And when they break,
make sure you're ready.

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LICHTGRENZE from Fall of the Wall 25 on Vimeo.

These past two days, 8,000 lit balloons have been floating above a ten-mile stretch of the original Berlin Wall.

Tonight, 8,000 citizens with keys will each unlock a separate balloon and it will escape, free, to the atmosphere.

It's part of the 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, an art installation by Christopher and Marc Bauder that has been in the works for many years.

My friend Bill sent me this video and article. I am pleased to share it here and encourage you, too, to watch this New York Times coverage of the installation. It's extraordinary art and essential history.

Tomorrow, I will take my Berlin Wall novel, Going Over, into Masterman, a Philadelphia school, and talk about history, risks, freedom, and responsibilities. On Friday the conversation will move to my alma mater, Radnor High. 

But today I wish I was in Berlin to see those 8,000 balloons fly free.

More on the wall and what it did, who tried to escape, how much it hurt, can be found here. 


Today your job is this: Take nothing for granted.

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