SOLTuesday: Widows Galore

            Widows’ Words: Women Write on the Experience of Grief, the First Year, the Long Haul, and Everything in Between, an anthology from Rutgers University Press (which I have a piece in) had its pub date last Friday. On the weekend, the editor, Nan Bauer-Maglin, gathered together more than half of us for a book party.

            We were in the lovely Upper West Side apartment of another contributor, and most of us were meeting for the first time. In one case, five women had collaborated, sharing their experiences in writing with each other, while one who was a writer brought their experiences together—yet none of them had met face-to-face until last weekend. One woman had come from Michigan, another from Virginia, another from the U.K. Some brought new partners or husbands, others (like me) brought a friend—and in true small world fashion, my friend found

work colleagues there who were related to the contributor from the U.K.

            I knew the anthologist and one other contributor, and had met yet another contributor at another book party the day before, so reading their essays filled in details about them some of which I knew already, others I was learning for the first time. But it was helpful to see the faces of those whose contributions I was just reading; they can stick in my memory much better now that I can see the face of the writer.

            We will see more of each other as we hold more book events—one contributor is also an artist, and at the gallery where her paintings are now on exhibit, there will be a book reading in on Thursday, May 9. I’m not reading at this one, but probably will at a bookstore event in the fall.

            It was, as many experiences widows share, fun and bittersweet.

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