Young adult fiction author Beth Kephart talks about books and obsession

Author Beth Kephart

Beth Kephart is an author of young adult fiction who has been making the rounds among online reviewers.  Savvy Verse & Wit says of Kephart's writing, "Kephart is a master of description, making each image vivid, each plot line significant, and she does it all in concise, poetic language."

If you've missed the first part of the interview, please check it out. 

Please share some of your obsessions.

The list is long.  Dance, of course -- doing it, watching it, dreaming it.  The moon, which I track through insomniac nights.  Clean and delicious food, which I try to cook as often as I can.  Perfect apples.

Do you have any particular writing habits, like listening to music while writing or having a precise page count to reach by the end of each day or week?

My life is too fractured to have any system or requirements—I run a business, I often teach, I maintain the blog, I dance, I promote one book while trying to write another.  Lately, though, I have been taking the writing off line.  I handwrite a few drafts of a few pages before I type them up, see what I have.  I am purposefully slowing myself down.

Which books have you been  reading lately, and are there any you would like to recommend?

I just read Mary Karr’s Lit, which I loved (and today blogged about).  I also read The Help this week; I didn’t have the reaction to it that all those who have made it a bestseller have.  I read a lot of nonfiction for research, and I look at a lot of photography books.  A recent photography book called Asylum by Chris Payne, has me in its thrall.

Please share some tidbits about your latest writing projects.

Well the upcoming The Heart Is not a Size is about a group of suburban Main Line kids who travel to Juarez to try to make a difference in a squatters community as part of a good will project.  It's really a story about two best friends, the secrets they are harboring, and the near collapse of that friendship against an extraordinary background.  It was inspired by a trip I took with several teens to Anapra.

After that comes Dangerous Neighbors, a highly poetic but also tension-filled book set against the backdrop of 1876 Philadelphia, the Centennial Exposition.  Lately, I have been working on a novel for adults.  When I finish that I will return to a book I've been writing for ten years, that features, among other things, an old cook from the Spanish Civil War era.

For more information about Beth Kephart, please visit her Website and her blog.