Join us for a very special in-person/virtual hybrid event featuring local writer Anna Caldwell (in-person) reading and discussing her contribution to the new book by Diane Zinna, Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss. Zinna plans to join us live virtually, so you can ask her questions about her work, as well!
FREE EVENT BUT RSVP IS REQUESTED (please fill out form below):
ABOUT LETTING GRIEF SPEAK
Society doesn’t always make it easy to tell stories about loss. Grief can make us feel that we have crossed over to another side, where people can’t reach us and we can’t reach others. We’re encouraged to move quickly through the often-misunderstood “stages of grief”; we fear that we are burdening others with our pain. But pain can feel more manageable when we find ways to describe it—and writing about grief can help us connect with others who have felt pain of their own.
Letting Grief Speak is a creative writing craft book on the art of telling our hardest stories. Based on a class called Grief Writing Sundays that Diane Zinna has led for several years, it provides 90 writing prompts with accompanying craft techniques to help people find language for their grief.
By turns gentle, unexpected, rebellious, and wonderfully strange, these prompts open portals: entryways into spaces where difficult emotions can become meaningful narratives.
Warm, sensitive, and honest, Letting Grief Speak is a memoir of the craft, interwoven with stories from the author’s own life. It also includes pieces from acclaimed writers and more than 40 of her Grief Writing students, inviting readers to find their own ways to tell vulnerable stories. A tool for writers and a companion for grievers, this book meets writers of all levels where they are, no matter what kind of grief they hold.
ANNA CALDWELL
ABOUT DIANE ZINNA
Diane Zinna is the author of The All-Night Sun (2020), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
Her work has appeared in Brevity, the Bellevue Literary Review, Split Lip, and CutBank.
A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has taught creative writing for more than 20 years.
Diane received her MFA from the University of Florida and was the longtime membership director for The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP). There, she created the Writer-to-Writer Mentorship Program, helping to match more than 600 writers over 12 seasons.
She is also the creator of Grief Writing Sundays, a popular writing class on telling difficult stories that has met since 2020.
In 2023, she served as the Darden Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA program at Old Dominion University, where the Diane Zinna Prize for Creative Nonfiction is now awarded annually. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia, with her husband and daughter.