In Good Company: Poets & Writers on Sloane Crosley

Sloane Crosley photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan

The combination of Poets & Writers + Sloane Crosley is almost too good to be true — yet here it is! We’re taking a moment to share an excerpt from the current Poets & Writers cover story, where Sloane dives into her new memoir. You can find the March/April issue of Poets & Writers on our B&N newsstands, and don’t miss our live event with Sloane at our Union Square location to talk all about her new book, Grief Is for People. Tickets and more information can be found here.

From the magazine:

This book is different from anything Crosley has written before. And yet, she says, while the subject she was writing about was the hardest thing she has ever experienced, the actual writing wasn’t. “The difficulty was in the subject matter and how dark and tragic and personal it is, and how explosive and yet claustrophobic grief is,” she says. “But in terms of the tools, I actually felt more comfortable writing this than perhaps I’ve ever felt writing anything.” Crosley knows writing a grief memoir that makes readers laugh will not please everyone. “It felt like there is a line to be walked if you’re writing something that is so sad: how to make it funny without making light of it, without being disrespectful of the dead or the subject matter, without potentially offending other people who have had similar experiences,” she says. “This will offend somebody.” No matter. She knows she’s in good company. “I’ve read a lot of writing on grief, and I find it all the more heartbreaking as a writer as well as a reader,” Crosley says, “because I know that the person writing would trade their book for the person in a heartbeat.”