Stephen Fried (@stephen_fried), a journalist, author of many books, and adjunct faculty member at Columbia and Penn joins Jamie-Lee to read and discuss his essay, "Dead Fathers Society," from his 2007 collection Husbandry. Stephen and Jamie-Lee discuss the nature of these respective societies and how not everyone who has lost a parent wants to tell…

Michelle Chikaonda (@machikaonda), a nonfiction writer from Malawi currently living and working in Philadelphia, joins Jamie-Lee and brilliant pal Izzy Lopez to read and discuss her essay, "Song for My Father" from The Pennsylvania Gazette. Michelle elaborates on the role that faith and music played in her life with her father and following his dea…

This episode is the audio recording from a virtual event held at the Kelly Writers House on November 18, 2020, featuring Hope Edelman, author of the new book The AfterGrief, as well as the widely successful and impactful book Motherless Daughters, and seven other nonfiction books. Hope and Jamie-Lee discuss Hope's process in writing and structuring…

Taylor Hosking (@Taylor__Hosking), a culture journalist and podcast producer, joins Jamie-Lee to discuss her recent piece from The Guardian about how she turned to fellow women of color after her mother's death from Covid-19. They discuss the recent, ongoing nature of this loss in combination with the collective grief that so many are feeling in th…

Isabella Simonetti, a current student at the University of Pennsylvania and the President of The Daily Pennsylvanian, joins Jamie-Lee for DPS's first Zoom episode. They discuss the writing Isabella has produced in an independent study at Penn about her mother's death from breast cancer, and how the scope of this work changed when the semester sudde…

This special episode of Dead Parents Society was recorded before a live audience at the Kelly Writers House and aired on WXPN, the public radio station at the University of Pennsylvania, in November 2019. Hosted as always by Jamie-Lee Josselyn, this episode features work by Emily Harnett, Zoe Osbourne, Gianna DeMedio, and Rachel Levy Lesser. Specia…

Rachel Levy Lesser, author of Life's Accessories: A Memoir and Fashion Guide, joins Jamie-Lee and Darcy Walker Krause, Executive Director of the Uplift Center for Grieving Children. The three of them discuss an essay from Rachel's new collection called "Hair Pulled Back in a Twilly," which is about not just Rachel's loss of her mother and the immed…

Molly O'Neill, a Los Angeles-based yoga instructor, writer, and longtime friend of the Kelly Writers House community reads from her essay "Parts of a Life" from YogaPoetica.com and discusses the piece with Jamie-Lee and DPS brilliant pal Anna Strong Safford. In their conversation, they discuss how teaching and practicing yoga integrated into Molly'…

Solomon Mussing, who also goes by the name L'Hussen Toure, an alum of the Summer Workshop for Young Writers at the Kelly Writers House, talks with Jamie-Lee about his piece "Letter to My Father," a memoir in the style of direct-address that he wrote to his father, who died by suicide. They discuss the obvious, unflinching directness of the mode, th…

In our Season 2 premiere, Anna Strong Safford, instructor and curriculum specialist at Penn, joins Jamie-Lee and DPS brilliant pal Molly O'Neill to read and discuss her poem "because my memories" from her manuscript bled. Anna's poem inspires a conversation about the use of earthly (and, indeed, worldly) imagery in writing about one's memories of g…

Rebecca Soffer, co-author of the book Modern Loss and co-founder of ModernLoss.com, joins Jamie-Lee and others in the Kelly Writers House garden for a live reading and conversation about writing about grief, the community that comes from it, and the various emotions and moods that this writing can evoke (spoiler alert: it doesn't always have to be …

Slate.com contributor and Widener Law professor John Culhane joins Jamie-Lee and Maya to read and discuss his piece "Little Mirrors of Mortality," which is from the perspective of a parent realizing his mortality in his children's eyes. Our usual perspective is flipped, in a sense, to great effect thanks to John's piece. We also discuss John's pers…

Arielle Brousse, author of the TinyLetter "Grief Beach" joins Jamie-Lee, Maya, and Sabrina to discuss how she came to write a weekly letter to friends and others about her difficult year of loss and how the form of a TinyLetter has impacted her writing, her grieving, and her relationships. They also discuss writing about not just grieving the death…

Bassini Apprentices Maya Arthur and Sabrina Qiao interview Jamie-Lee Josselyn on her essay, "When News of a Suicide Comes During Memoir Class" from LitHub in September 2016. They discuss how personal history and the writing that comes from it converges with and remains separate from the work of a creative writing teacher.…

Jess Bergman (@jesslbergman), Features Editor at Literary Hub, joins Jamie-Lee, Maya, and Sabrina to discuss her essay "The Difficult Business of Dying" from The New Republic in December 2017. In the essay, Jess weaves together her own experience of mourning her father with Caitlin Doughty's book From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find t…

Essayist and songwriter Catherine Ricketts (http://catherinedanaricketts.com/) joins Jamie-Lee, Maya, and Sabrina to discuss her essay "Eloquent Limbs" and her song "Books to be Buried In," which she also performs. Cat, who joined us for our live event in April, discusses how she decides to approach particular experiences through songwriting versus…

The poet and essayist Victoria Newton Ford joins Jamie-Lee, Maya, and Sabrina to discuss her poem "Elegy for Clitoris" from Connotation Press. Victoria has said that she writes "to tell the truth, and the truth is often hideous. And though it feels good to write, I don't write to make the reader feel good, particularly. I write to make you feel. To…

Jamie-Lee talks with the writer Scott Gould, who is the director of creative writing at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, about how he approaches working with high school students who are facing difficult personal material, including, but not limited to loss and grief. They discuss general classroom pedagogy, specifi…

Jamie-Lee Josselyn (@jljosselyn) and Kristen Martin (@kwistent) discuss Hope Edelman's 1994 book Motherless Daughters, which has remained successful in the more than 2 decades since its release. Jamie-Lee and Kristen, whose mothers died from suicide and cancer respectively, discuss the book's form, its longevity, how it enables readers to both conn…

Sabrina Qiao, Maya Arthur, and Jamie-Lee Josselyn gather with Kristen Martin (@kwistent) to discuss her essay "Don't Cover Your Eyes," from Catapult in 2016. Kristen's essay inspires conversation about how a television show -- in this case, HBO's Six Feet Under -- can help access grief, rather than numb it. The group also discusses how writing abou…

Jamie-Lee Josselyn gathers with Emily Harnett (@therealeharnett) and Maya Arthur (@maya_s_arthur) to discuss Where Everything Is In Halves by Gabriel Ojeda-Sague (@hadeejasouffle) published by Be About It Press. Gabe reads a selection from the chapbook and then joins the conversation about choosing a particular form/approach/constraint to writing a…

This episode was recorded live at the Kelly Writers House on April 16, 2018 at Dead Parents Society's Beltran Family Teaching Award Program. Jamie-Lee hosts the writers Catherine Ricketts, Seth Laracy, Mingo Reynolds, Isabella Simonetti, and Anna Strong who each read a piece of writing about the loss of a parent. Conversation and questions from the…

Jamie-Lee Josselyn (@jljosselyn) gathers with Gabriel Ojeda-Sague (@hadeejasouffle) and Sabrina Qiao to discuss "When Art Cannot Console Us in Death" by Emily Harnett (@therealeharnett) from Literary Hub. Emily reads the piece and then joins in on the conversation too, which covers everything from grieving secularly to the reasons we write about de…