Grief Cannot Be Gotten Over--It Must Be Gotten Through

The first essay collection released by Dalton Publishing, Stricken: The 5,000 Stages of Grief is edited by award-winning authors Spike Gillespie (Pissed Off: On Women and Anger) and Katherine Tanney (Carousel of Progress). The book is a collection of essays on grief written by a variety of contributors including best-selling authors and award-winning writers Rachel Resnick, Owen Egerton, Margaret Moser, and Hope Edelman. Stricken will be released in March 2009.

The essays in Stricken are written as much for the contributors as they are for the readers, since each essay is born of a personally painful and dark experience. The personal vignettes in Stricken reflect the truth that grief stems from many sources, in many forms, and effects each of us in very different ways. These essays are intended to console, comfort, inspire, and empower readers, and serve as a valuable resource for the grieving. The writers in Stricken bravely demonstrate that grief cannot be gotten over--it must be gotten through.

Editor Spike Gillespie knows firsthand the difficulty of coping with grief's sudden onset. The winter of 2007 was a particularly difficult season in her life as she struggled to keep going in the face of a dear friend's death and the end of her marriage. She found that the best way to move forward was to stay busy¯with work, travel, whatever¯as long as she kept moving. Vowing to move forward by keeping busy and enveloping herself in work, Gillespie initially produced the idea for Stricken. She invited fellow Austin author Katherine Tanney to co-edit the book, and together they recruited a wonderful and diverse collection of writers to contribute to the project.

"Delving into personal stories of sadness and renewal, I came away from this collection changed. Stricken is a book that makes you feel less alone in the world." -- Amanda Eyre Ward, author of How to Be Lost and Forgive Me

"There could be no finer companions in grief than the two dozen writers who offer their own experiences in essays that are luminously insightful, (Buffy Cram), devastatingly understated, (Katherine Tanney), idiosyncratically sublime, (Spike Gillespie), and fierce and funny in their honesty, (Mollie McLean Staffa)." -- Sarah Bird, Texas Monthly columnist and author of How Perfect Is That

"For anyone who has ever suffered through loss and was brave enough to find the miracles in it. Perfect material for crying in public." -- Pamela Ribon, television writer for "Samantha Who?" and author of Why Moms Are Weird