Arts & Entertainment

REMINDER: Stasia Ward Kehoe at Barnes & Noble Tuesday

Stasia Ward Kehoe's new book, "Audition," hit the stores last Thursday. She'll celebrate it, and the Eastside arts community, with a launch party Tuesday night at Barnes & Noble in Woodinville.

In the video trailer for Stasia Ward Kehoe’s debut novel Audition, a teenage ballet student practices graceful steps, tapes her injured toes and smiles pensively.

While a solo cello plays in the background, enticing verse from the Woodinville author’s first young-adult novel floats across the screen:

Dare I tell them

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that since I have come here to dance

I have been giving

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pieces of my body away

To ridiculous diets,

To repeated injury,

To Remington?

(Cue the romantic book cover with a young couple embracing.)

If it makes viewers want to see the movie, they’ll have to wait.

But they can read the new book starting Thursday, Oct. 13, released by Viking/Penguin.

‘Who you are, what you want’

Kehoe draws on her life experiences in Audition (Viking/Penguin, $17.99 hardcover list price, $10.99 ebook).

She’s danced since she was a child, everything from ballet to modern dance. She’s been a choreographer. She’s a writer. And then there’s the kissing video (more on that later).

“It’s a coming of age story, it’s a story about being a teen performer and how that impacts your experience of high school, and it’s a romance,” Kehoe says in describing the book. “It’s basically a story of sorting out who you are and what you want.”

They do not say to you

When you start in first position

That you may never be

Thin enough

Strong enough

Flexible enough

That you may never be

Enough.

For Kehoe, 44 and the mother of four boys, the subject matter of her book isn’t just fiction. She readily talks about the importance of arts in young people’s educations, and she’s a big supporter of young Woodinville artists.

The dancer in her book trailer video is  junior Kayla Matthews. It was filmed by Jordan Markezich, an aspiring filmmaker.

“I was excited by the opportunity to use real teen artists to make that happen, because it’s really what I care about,” Kehoe says.

And her  is as much about arts education as it is about the novel itself.

On the program are two or three young performers from , a student from Northwest Art Center sketching live at the event, and a couple of young actresses who will read some of the monologue that was the origin of the novel.

“I hope that people enjoy the book, and I’m proud of it, but I want to speak about the opportunity on the Eastside for kids interested in the arts,” Kehoe says. “I wanted to make it more of a celebration of the great things in our community.”

‘Dance on the page’

Beyond the subject matter, Kehoe weaves dance into the whole book with its style – it’s written in verse.

The book sprang from a monologue that Kehoe wrote about a dancer getting ready for an audition, which was the spark for the main character. Kehoe then wrote a short story about her for a contest and won.

Encouraged by people asking for more, she turned it into the novel, first trying in prose, then switching to verse after hearing an author talk about that approach.

“I really wanted to put performance on the page, and dance on the page,” she explains.

She also tapped her experience as a choreographer.

“I actually made the dances that are in the book – I know what they look like,” she says.

So, how much of Kehoe’s life is in the book?

“Some of the dancers in the book are drawn from people I knew,” she says, along with settings from her New England background. “Happily, though, as I told my father, I didn’t get involved with an older choreographer.”

She did do some research to write the kissing scenes.

“I was telling a book-blogger friend … about how, sometimes, when I’m writing a romantic scene (such as a kiss), I’ll go find my husband in the family room or wherever and plant one on him—just to really reconnect with the physical experience and come up with some fresh language for the scene,” Kehoe explains.  “Then I ditch him and get back to my manuscript.” (You can find her “how to” video here.)

IF YOU GO

What: Launch party for Stasia Ward Kehoe’s young-adult novel, Audition

When: Tuesday, Oct. 18, 6-7 p.m.

Where: , 18025 Garden Way N.E., Woodinville


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