Books and Awards
As the author of nearly forty books in multiple genres, Beth Kephart has been named a National Book Award finalist as well as a winner of the Pew Fellowships in the Arts grant, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Leeway grant for Creative Nonfiction, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Top Fiction grant, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Her books have received multiple starred reviews, been named to Best of Year lists, and been translated into more than fifteen languages. Continue Reading
Teaching and Workshops
Beth is an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the 2013 Master Writing Teacher for National YoungArts, is a co-founder of Juncture Workshops, has delivered keynote addresses on the art of teaching, has led teach-the-teacher sessions, and has taught writers of all ages in a variety of settings. She has published a number of books on the teaching of memoir—Handling the Truth, Tell the Truth. Make It Matter., Strike the Empty, We Are the Words: The Memoir Master Class—and writes a monthly educational newsletter, Juncture Notes. Continue Reading
Essays, Reviews, and Interviews
Beth’s essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Normal School, Ninth Letter, Orion, The Boston Globe, CRAFT, North American Review, Tin House, LitHub, Salon, The Millions, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Family Circle, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Cleaver, and Woven Tale Press, among many other publications. Frequently anthologized, her work has appeared in Best American Sports Writing, Mothers Who Think, Big Shoes, and New York Times Writers on Writing. Continue Reading
News and Events
Beth has appeared as a guest on numerous TV and radio shows as well as literary panels. She and her artist husband make and sell handmade books. She has frequently presented keynote addresses and talks.
"Kephart is a linguistic Midas—everything she puts to paper is golden."
Books— Darcy Jacobs, Family Circle
Beth Bio
Beth Kephart, the award-winning author of more than three-dozen books of fiction and nonfiction for readers of all ages, has chaired national literature juries; written about memoir and literature for national publications; interviewed some of the most exquisite writers among us (see below); and both presented keynotes and participated in panel discussions on behalf of the SCBWI, Moravian Writers’ Conference, the National Council of Teachers of English, the Decatur Book Festival, Bank Street, and the Fox Cities Book Festival, among many others. She currently serves as Senior Editor, Creative Editions.
Recent memoir work includes Wife | Daughter | Self: A Memoir in Essays (Forest Avenue Press), which earned numerable honors. My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera is newly released from Temple University Press.
Recent memoir craft books include Consequential Truths: On Writing the Lived Life, We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class, Tell the Truth. Make It Matter: A Memoir Workbook, Strike the Empty, and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir.
Recent novels for young readers include Cloud Hopper (co-winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, 7-12 grades), The Great Upending (a 2020 Parents’ Choice Gold Medal Winner), and Wild Blues (a Junior Library Guild Selection).
Picture book stories/biographies/histories include: Trini’s Big Leap (illustrated by William Sulit), And I Paint It: Henriette Wyeth’s World (illustrated by Amy June Bates), Beautiful Useful Things (illustrated by Melodie Stacey), A Room of Your Own: A Story Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Famous Essay (illustrated by Julia Brekenreid), Good Books for Bad Children: The Genius of Ursula Nordstrom (illustrated by Chloe Bristol), and Mud Angels, forthcoming, illustrated by Roberto Innocenti), among others.
An adjunct teacher of creative nonfiction and fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Beth received the 2015 Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching and Mentoring. She was the 2013 National YoungArts master writing teacher and has conducted workshops across the country in a variety of settings ranging from universities and high schools to community centers and literary festivals.
Beth co-founded Juncture Workshops in 2016. Juncture delivers memoir workshops in extraordinary landscapes and produces a monthly newsletter featuring memoir ideas, ruminations, and prompts. To learn more about her approach to writing and teaching memoir, please listen to this Life Story Coach podcast.
Beth was named one of the 50 writers celebrated in the year-long Philadelphia’s Literary Legacy exhibit at the Philadelphia International Airport, and passages and photographs from her book Love: A Philadelphia Affair were the subject of a six-month display at the Philadelphia International Airport in 2016. She is a Radnor High School Hall of Famer and delivered the Radnor commencement address in 2016, and her book Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River has become a Philadelphia classic. Beth is on the editorial advisory board of Image Journal and on the advisory board of Cleaver Magazine.
Over the course of her career, Beth has interviewed, for print magazines as well as for library and academic events, writers ranging from C.K. Williams and Gerald Stern to Emily St. John Mandel, Casey Gerald, Nicole Chung, Buzz Bissinger, Sara Novic, Daniel Menaker, Ken Kalfus, Harlan Coben, Margaret Renkl, Carolyn Forche, Dani Shapiro, Alice Elliott Dark, Abigail Thomas, Will Dowd, and Amy Tan.
Beth and her husband create blank books with his original art and her handmade papers. BINDbyBIND, their Etsy shop, is live. More about her book work at bind-arts.com.
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Wild Blues
“Lizzie’s story of friendship and family is also one of literary depth; readers will be entranced by this exceptional offering from National Book Award–finalist Kephart.”
PW Starred Review
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Small Damages
“’Dreamlike’ is one word for Beth Kephart’s latest novel ‘Small Damages’…[Kenzie’s] percolating story emerges through Kephart’s lilting prose in the same hazy way you’d meander through the narrow white streets of Seville…The reader is lost and found and lost and found again.”
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This Is the Story of You
“A moving epic of a super storm and how it unravels the lives of those caught in the midst.”
VOYA Ten