Beth Kephart

Strike the Empty Beth Kephart

"Reading her, you see she hasn't left poetry entirely. Poetry's precision and its indirect approach to truth--groping sideways toward it, showing it but not necessarily stating it--stamp her prose; her leaps and metaphors can be at once seductive and elliptical. But she does try to tell you what she means. She's all for the writer's burning truth, for instance, as long as the writer's imagination includes others." Richard Gilbert, Woven Tale Press

Strike the Empty: notes for readers, writers, and teachers of memoir brings together five years of Beth Kephart's writing on memoir and memoir makers, some of which first appeared in Juncture Notes. It offers reflections on eternal imperfection and the poetics of truth, memoir as politics and the abandonment of the linear, the power of not insisting and failure as the first indicator of success, and dozens of truth-bleeding books. Interviews with Casey Gerald, Kristen Radtke, Megan Stielstra, Chloe Honum, Paul Lisicky, Inara Verzemnieks, Judy Goldman, Nicole Chung, Will Dowd, and others are featured. Abigail Thomas's place in memoir history, Bruce Springsteen's memoir-inducing river songs, Andrew Wyeth's inspirations for writers, the empathetic imagination, the high-wire act of reviewing memoirs, and the art of the suppose are among the topics that are deeply explored.

Beautifully illustrated with black-and-white photographs and inspirational quotes, Strike the Empty is, by turns, emphatic and questing. It celebrates memoir for what memoir can be--transcendent and transcending.