@DeadParentsSoc

@DeadParentsSoc

Beltran Prize

Bassini Apprenticeships

Dead Parents Society

Dead Parents Society is a podcast series about writing about the loss of a parent, hosted by Jamie-Lee Josselyn. We at Dead Parents Society are particularly interested in emerging writers who experienced their loss at a young age and whose writing and world view have been shaped, at least in part, by this experience.

In each episode of Dead Parents Society, a small group of us will hear an excerpt from a piece of writing about parental loss, as read by the author, then we'll discuss it for a bit without the writer, then we'll bring the writer in to give us some more insight on the piece and how it came to be. It is our hope that these discussions will be helpful to those of you listening who are writers yourselves, even if you aren't writing about loss, and also to those of you who aren't writers — or aren't yet writers! — who have grieved the death of a parent or someone else close to you.

Dead Parents Society is made possible by Penn's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing's Bassini Writing Apprenticeships and by the Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching and Mentoring at the Kelly Writers House.

Click here to subscribe to the Dead Parents Society podcast on iTunes.

Episodes

  1. Episode 1 - Emily Harnett on "When Art Cannot Console Us in Death" - (54:45)
  2. Episode 2 - Recorded live from Kelly Writers House - (01:25:41)
  3. Episode 3 - Gabriel Ojeda-Sague on Where Everything Is In Halves - (55:20)
  4. Episode 4 - Kristen Martin on "Don't Cover Your Eyes" - (55:57)
  5. Episode 5 - Jamie-Lee Josselyn and Kristen Martin on Hope Edelman's "Motherless Daughters" - (49:48)
  6. Episode 6 - Scott Gould and Jamie-Lee Josselyn on the pedagogy of writing about difficult experience - (1:10:00)
  7. Episode 7 - Victoria Ford on "Elegy for Clitoris" - (1:21:19)
  8. Episode 8 - Catherine Ricketts on "Eloquent Limbs" and "Books to be Buried In" - (1:01:18)
  9. Episode 9 - Jess Bergman on "The Difficult Business of Dying" - (1:10:45)
  10. Episode 10 - Jamie-Lee Josselyn on "When News of a Suicide Comes During Memoir Class" - (52:35)
  11. Episode 11 - Arielle Brousse on "Grief Beach" - (1:01:27)
  12. Episode 12 - John Culhane on "Little Mirrors of Mortality" - (1:04:42)
  13. Episode 13 - Rebecca Soffer of Modern Loss - (1:02:15)
  14. Episode 14 - Anna Strong Safford on "because my memories" - (44:15)
  15. Episode 15 - Solomon Mussing on "Letter to My Father" - (1:01:04)
  16. Episode 16 - Molly O'Neill on "Parts of a Life" - (41:42)
  17. Episode 17 - Rachel Levy Lesser on "Hair Pulled Back in a Twilly" - (56:31)
  18. Episode 18 - DPS featured on "Live at the Writers House" on WXPN - (56:31)
  19. Episode 19 - Gianna DeMedio on "Sixty-Three" and So Sorry For Your Loss - (1:03:10)
  20. Episode 20 - Isabella Simonetti's reflection on writing about loss during a pandemic - (47:37)
  21. Episode 21 - Taylor Hosking on Covid loss and support from women of color - (49:48)
  22. Episode 22 - Hope Edelman on The AfterGrief - (1:11:36)
  23. Episode 23 - Michelle Chikaonda on "Song for my Father" - (1:26:53)