Last Thursday evening, 1455’s Executive Director Sean Murphy was joined by Jennifer Haupt, editor of ALONE TOGETHER: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19, along with contributing authors Gina Frangello, Susan Henderson, Stephen P. Kiernan, Susan Rich, and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, for a special discussion about this diverse collection of essays, poems, and interviews that benefits the Book Industry Charitable Fund. Video of the conversation (and author bios) below.
Thank you for supporting our partners at D.C.’s historic The Potter’s House and purchasing your copy of ALONE TOGETHER from an independent bookseller!
Jennifer Haupt’s essays and articles have been published in O, The Oprah Magazine, Parenting, The Rumpus, Spirituality & Health, The Sun and many other publications. She also curates the popular Psychology Today blog, “One True Thing,” a collection of essays for authors and readers. Her debut novel, In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills was awarded the Foreword Reviews Bronze Indie Award for Historical Fiction
Gina Frangello is the author of four books of fiction and a forthcoming memoir, Blow Your House Down. She has nearly 20 years of experience as an editor, having founded both the independent press Other Voices Books, and the fiction section of the popular online literary community The Nervous Breakdown. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews and journalism have been published in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies.
Susan Henderson is a Hawthornden International Fellow, a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Award. She is the author of the novels Up from the Blue and The Flicker of Old Dreams, both published by HarperCollins. A lifetime member of the NAACP and the National Book Critics Circle, she lives in New York and blogs at the writer support group, LitPark.
As a journalist and novelist, Stephen P. Kiernan has had more than four million words in print. Author of the novels Universe of Two, The Baker’s Secret, The Hummingbird and The Curiosity, he has also written the nonfiction books Last Rights and Authentic Patriotism. His work has won more than forty awards, and he’s also lectured and consulted nationally on hospice and end-of-life care. He lives in Vermont.
Susan Rich is the author of four collections of poetry including Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, named a finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue, winner of the PEN USA Award for Poetry and the Peace Corps Writers Award. Along with Brian Turner and Jared Hawkley, she is editor of The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders. Rich’s poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, New England Review, and the Southern Review.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is an Arab American poet, essayist, and translator. Her full-length collection, Water & Salt, won the 2018 Washington State Book Award. Her chapbook, Arab in Newsland, won the 2016 Two Sylvias Press Prize, and Letters from the Interior (Diode) is a finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her essays have been published in multiple magazines, and she lives in Redmond, Washington with her family.
Another reading from ALONE TOGETHER, taken from 2020’s 1455 Summer Lit Fest:
