Who We Lost: A Portable Covid Memorial - Paperback

by Martha Greenwald (Author)

Essays mourning the losses of the COVID pandemic, and a guide to writing your own: "A wonderful resource for those seeking an outlet for their grief." --Publishers Weekly

In 2020, Martha Greenwald invited mourners to write memories of loved ones lost to COVID on the Who We Lost website. The site has been growing ever since, as the bereaved continue to write and publish stories, and the writers' toolbox section of the website offers guidance and prompts for anyone wishing to contribute their story to this grassroots public memorial.

The resultant book, Who We Lost: A Portable COVID Memorial, contains dozens of essays and a writing guide for those wishing to add their own story about a loved one who died from COVID. It is a community-generated tribute, a eulogy, and a collective memorial--the first book that focuses on the grief of the COVID-bereaved, and offers a purposeful activity that respects mourners as well as the mourned.

"Who We Lost manages, in its specificity, to immortalize not only the people whose lives and losses are represented here but also so many others whose names have gone unlisted." --Third Coast Review

Author Biography

Martha Greenwald is the founding director and curator of The WhoWeLost Project, and editor of Who We Lost: Writing to Remember the Pandemic. Her book, Other Prohibited Items, was the winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Series. She is the winner of the 2020 Yeats Prize. Her work has appeared in many journals including New World Writing, The Threepenny Review, Slate, Poetry, and Best New Poets. She has held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and been awarded fellowships from the Breadloaf and Sewanee Writer's Conferences, Yaddo, and elsewhere. A New Jersey native, she lives in Louisville, Kentucky.