Budejovicka

A micro love story. Also: This coming Wednesday I'll be speaking to one of the best micro-ists around, Darien Gee. Join us live, details below.

“In Our Loving,” Beth Kephart, Monotype

It was the way the dust hung, globed and white, and how every room was square and thumbtacked green with ivy.

She’d left three slips drying on the line you could barely reach if you almost fell through the kitchen window, and a peach on the table, and the old bear of her winter coat in the closet because it was still, in some ways, an animal, and, besides, we were only passing through and it was summer, and didn’t our son play her piano, then, in forgiveness of every missing key?

My plum and your heel of bread at the Metro stop. Paper goose wings from a hook in the ceiling. And in the direction I would point to, Prague, where, they strolled the streets with accordions playing Dixie and we bore witness to romance from within the face of a clock.

I saved the puppet with the collapsed hat from the bridge. I bought silver for my ears, and bottles for perfume, and houses made of plaster, and a coin for my neck, and flowers to replace the rotted peach on the table at Miss Novotny’s. I reeled her three slips in. Which is how we learned to live life twice, and how we are not old yet, in our loving.

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So,

Darien Gee

. You all know (you must!) Darien Gee. Bestselling novelist. Coach extraordinaire. An aficionado of micro prose, which is to say power packed inside 300 words or less. (“Budejovicka” is 213.)

Darien has a buzzing, bright, and bountiful Subsack, Writer-ish, and I’ll be her lucky guest this coming Wednesday. The details: June 5, 2025, which is to say Thursday 12:00 pm PDT. "Three Things" is a conversation on Substack Live in which Darien (I am quoting directly from her now) talks with authors about their creative process. Each guest shares three things: a piece of short prose, a prompt, and a writing tip. I’m ready, excited, and hopeful that you’ll join us.

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My first book on the writing of memoir, Handling the Truth, won a Books for a Better Life Award shortly after its publication in 2013. I’ve continued to write books about the making of true stories ever since, working with my husband to create workbooks, prompt-rich books, and suggested approaches to the page. A guide to those resources, along with a link to my essay collection You Are Not Vanished Here (illustrated by William Sulit) can be found here.

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My new novel, built of many small pieces is called Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News: A Philadelphia Story, and it is available wherever books are sold.

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Join me for a Cleaver master class, “Transcending the Tumult: Write Right Now,” July 27, registration here.

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Join me for an in-person writing workshop in September, through Maine Media.