The AWP Virtual Book Club—Writers Talking Books with Other Writers: Craft-Focused Discussion that Gets Up Close and Personal

April 15, 2020

Virtual AWP: Virtual Book Club with Sue William Silverman

Join us for the AWP Virtual Book Club: a book club with a unique craft focus. Our featured book for April/May is Sue William Silverman’s How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences. Silverman’s essay collection, recently featured on Lit Hub, tackles the knotty question of how we should best live in the ever-present shadow of death.  

On Friday, May 1, 2020, we will begin posting discussion questions at the AWP Community of Writers Facebook group. Each Friday, craft-focused questions will be shared—from 3 to 5 p.m. ET we will hold a discussion in the comments (which Sue William Silverman will join!). Here you can respond to the questions and engage in virtual craft conversation.  

Mark your calendars for these Fridays: May 1, May 8, and May 15. Our final meeting on Thursday, May 21, at 5 p.m. ET will be a “watch party” with Sue William Silverman as she discusses her book and answers additional questions on YouTube.  

Ask the Author Questions

Have questions you would like to submit in advance for Sue William Silverman to include in her video conversation? Please send them to socialmedia@awpwriter.org.

Purchase the Book

To purchase How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences electronically, you can do so on the University of Nebraska Press website with a 40% discount with the code 6AS20. You can also purchase a paperback version of the book at Bookshop.org.

We ask that you consider purchasing the book directly from the press and/or an independent bookstore of your choice. In this time of coronavirus, we are committed to supporting small presses, independent publishers, and bookstores however we can.  

About How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences

James Dean embodies the concept “live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.” But for the rest of us, dying, let alone young, is to be avoided at all costs. Death should be raged against, not welcomed. This thematically linked collection charts one woman’s attempt to confront her fears of death, as well as her desire to survive it. In her own quest for some form of immortality, Sue William Silverman is willing to consider anything, including mummification, space travel, hypnosis, and driving cross-country to Graceland. “Who Wants to Live Forever?” the rock band Queen asks. Silverman does. Don’t we all?

About the Author

Sue William Silverman is an award-winning memoirist and poet. In addition to her new memoir-in-essays, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, her books include Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember YouLove Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, which was also made into a Lifetime Television movie; The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew; and Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir. Silverman teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Please see www.SueWilliamSilverman.com for more information.

 

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