In the tradition of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, a critically acclaimed National Book Award finalist shares inspiration and practical advice for writing a memoir.Writing memoir is a deeply personal, and consequential, undertaking. As the acclaimed author of five memoirs spanning significant turning points in her life, Beth Kephart has been both blessed and bruised by the genre. In Handling the Truth, she thinks out loud about the form—on how it get...

Like a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac, Elisa ghostwrites love notes for the boys in her school. But when Elisa falls for Theo Moses, things change fast. Theo asks for verses to court the lovely Lila—a girl known for her beauty, her popularity, and a cutting ability to remind Elisa that she has none of these. At home, Elisa's father, the one person she feels understands her, has left on an extended business trip. As the days grow shorter, Elisa worries that the increasingly urgent letters sh...

Georgia knows what it means to keep secrets. She knows how to ignore things. She knows that some things are better left unsaid. . . . Or are they?When Georgia and her best friend, Riley, travel along with nine other suburban Pennsylvania kids to Anapra, a squatters' village in the heat-flattened border city of Juarez, Mexico, secrets seem to percolate and threaten both a friendship and a life. Certainties unravel. Reality changes. And Georgia is left to figure out who she is outsid...

Award-winning author Beth Kephart and illustrator Melodie Stacey's poetic picture book, Beautiful Useful Things, is about the life and work of William Morris, maker of beautiful, useful things, sure to engage young dreamers and artists alike.William Morris is best known for his colorful wallpapers and textiles, inspired by the English forests and wild foliage where he grew up. But did you know this icon of the Arts and C...

Zenobia is a former industry giant bedeviled by paralyzing hierarchies, grossly inadequate communications, and distrust. It is a broken place, a fortress doomed to collapse upon itself. Enter Moira, a young woman responding to a cryptic help wanted ad that asks her to report to room 133A – but there are no directions, no sign of the room, and nobody seems inclined to help her find it. As she moves through the Zenobian maze, Moira makes some surprising discoveries about the power of teamwor...

Teenagers in love are separated by the Berlin Wall in this "compelling [and] gripping" novel by the National Book Award finalist ( Kirkus Reviews).It is February 1983, and Berlin is a divided city with a miles-long barricade separating east from west. But the city isn't the only thing that is divided. Graffiti artist Ada lives among the rebels, punkers, and immigrants of Kreuzberg in West Berlin. Stefan lives in East Berlin, in a faceless apartment bunker ...

?National Book Award nominee Beth Kephart’s new book is an enchanting midlife meditation on aging, identity, and memory set against the backdrop of Chanticleer garden in Pennsylvania. On the morning of her forty-?rst birthday, Kephart — a mother, a wife, and a writer pressured by deadlines — finds herself at Chanticleer, one of the world’s most celebrated pleasure gardens. She knows little of the language of flowers. She cannot name the birds in the trees. She is a stranger among the garde...

**A high school senior is shipped off to a sun-soaked Spanish village in order to secretly give birth then return like nothing has ever happened—but is that really the only option?“The novel is a story about choices . . . but also about finding one’s self.”—The New York Times Book Review“Delicate and luscious.”—Kathryn Erskine, author of National Book Award-winner Mockingbird**The future should be right within reach, but for Kenzie the future has s...

Something is not right with Nadia Cara. While spending a year in Florence, Italy, she's become a thief. She has secrets. And when she tries to speak, the words seem far away. Nadia finds herself trapped by her own obsessions and following the trail of an elusive Italian boy whom only she has seen. Can Nadia be rescued or will she simply lose herself altogether? Set against the backdrop of a glimmering city, One Thing Stolen is an exploration of obsession, art, and a rare neurologi...

Wife | Daughter | Self investigates identity and the writing life through the perspective of one of the nation’s top memoir teachers and critics.How are we shaped by the people we love? Who are we when we think no one else is watching? How do we trust the choices we make? The answers shift as the years go by. The stories remake themselves as we remember. Curiously, inventively, Beth Kephart reflects on the iterative, composite self in her new memoir—travel...

Paper both shapes and defines us. Baby books, diaries, sewing patterns, diplomas, resumes, letters, death certificates—we find our stories in them. My Life in Paper is Beth Kephart’s memoiristic exploration of the paper legacies we forge and leave.Kephart’s obsession with paper began in the wake of her father’s death, when she began to handcraft books and make and marble paper in his memory. But it was when she read My Life with Paper, an autobiography by the late...

Graduation from high school?A senior thesis?A betrayal by someone you love?A loss of innocence?The death of a parent?Losing the family you always wished you had?Facing a harsh reality?What's the line that separates childhood from the "real world"? And what happens when it's nothing you imagined it would be?Do you want to be a published author?The editors at HarperCollins invite you to submit a short story about a chara...