LITERARY TITAN GOLD BOOK AWARD WINNER!
I am overjoyed, my friends! This is the first book award of my career! Thank you so much to the Literary Titan team for taking the time to read, review and AWARD my little book of poetry!
FIVE-STAR REVIEW BY LITERARY TITAN!
LITERARY TITAN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR!
I was asked some very thoughtful questions about We the Mourners, inspirations, motivations and explanations…
What conversations do you hope We the Mourners inspires among readers?
Hmmm. Another great question! I hope that it inspires conversations about the body, about heart-led choices, about belief systems that are not unconditional… I hope readers give themselves grace as they read, just as I gave myself grace when I wrote to ‘be’ in the powerful, profoundness of mourning. I hope that conversations about the sacredness of being a human ensue! I hope there are conversations about souls and love, and the delightfully terrifying truth that being alive means we are also dying, and quietly, each of us is engaged in the mourning of our own body’s love life. I hope that there are conversations about shifting out of competitive suffering, out of the belief that one person’s pain is different than/more important than/deserves more attention than someone else’s. Even the human being who makes the most horrific choices that result in the deaths of other humans can be mourned. What is that human’s love story? These are difficult thoughts to stand in, to feel in. But, I believe, there are mourners who choose to take on these realities, and hold them. That we can each stand in, and feel, and mourn the extraordinary possibility that each human is here to love and be loved—yet will not or cannot. What then? That’s something to talk about.
VANESSA SHIELDS 