The understanding that emerges from well-told stories.

The importance of being an authentic self. If you could identify other “truths” that readers might discover in Nothing But Ghosts and The Heart is Not a Size, what would they be? You write, “Beauty and sadness can both live in one place.” I think this is a huge truth contained in this novel. I think that Nothing but Ghosts is about this in so many ways.

Your books are, in my opinion, about how everyday life can be miraculous – full of mystery and beauty and sadness all at once. This young girl who became a character in Heart:Ĭhanticleer (the setting of Ghosts), and the young writers and readers who teach me: If you had to choose 5 things (ideas / books / objects / topics / people / hobbies) that have most inspired your writing, what would you choose? (Indeed, I have been told that miraculously I have been saved again and again by an editor willing to take a risk.) My writing life is full of uncertainty, therefore, but I know of no other way to work the page. My books are not off-the-chart sellers I am in jeopardy, with each new book I write, of finally being told, You know, you are just not hitting the numbers you are no longer an author we can support. My books are not advertised or toured they must be discovered. My novels are about young people facing the big questions-identity, loss, secrets, anxieties-and it is difficult for books that dwell in those themes to gain traction against books that have been explicitly conceived and crafted for a well-researched market. I write the stories that interest me, the characters I understand, the scenes that are most alive and vivid, either in memory or in the imagination. I was wondering out loud whether I would have the skill to write such concoctions, and I was deciding, rather assuredly, that I would not. I was responding, in my blog, to the fascinating New Yorker piece by Rebecca Mead titled “The Gossip Mill,” which featured Alloy, the entertainment packaging company behind the wildly popular series you mention here. Oh, what a great question (and what a hard one, too). What’s it like to write books like yours when it seems like so much publicity and media pushes girls towards the write-by-number reads? I feel like your YA novels exist at the completely opposite end of the writing spectrum, with their richness of theme and immaculate poetic language – almost like antidotes to Gossip Girl. You wrote a post at your blog recently about the huge popularity of series like Gossip Girl, The Luxe and The Clique, which you described as “write-by-numbers” books. Read my reviews: of Undercover, House of Dance, Nothing but Ghosts, and the upcoming The Heart is Not a Size. Her books are richly poetic and I love every one of them. In my opinion, Beth is one of the most gifted authors writing for young adults right now.

I am honoured to be able to treat all of you to my amazing recent chat with Beth Kephart, for the Winter Blast Blog Tour.

Dangerous neighbors by beth kephart