Out of Grief, Singing (Signature Editions)

Out of Grief, Singing is an achingly beautiful account of how a woman comes to terms with the loss of her newborn. After a bewildering series of rapid diagnoses and emergency interventions, Charlene’s daughter Chloe is born. But her too-brief life is spent in the neonatal intensive care unit, and her mother, leveled by an epidural anaesthetic procedure gone wrong, can barely make it to her daughter’s side. In the months following Chloe’s death, more medical crises further complicate matters, making it nearly impossible to even begin the grieving process, let alone return to any semblance of a normal life. But return she does, along a path that is both arduous and rich. With a poet's ear for language, Charlene Diehl shares her discovery of joy amidst a devastating loss.

Charlene Diehl is a writer, educator, critic, teacher and the director of THIN AIR, Winnipeg’s annual literary splash. She has published essays, poetry, non-fiction, reviews, and interviews in journals across Canada, and has to her credit a scholarly book on Fred Wah as well as a collection of poetry, lamentations, and two chapbooks, mm and The Lover’s Handbook. Excerpts from Out of Grief Singing, which appeared in Prairie Fire, won a western Canadian Magazine Gold Award. She was the featured poet in the fall 2007 issue of CV2. When she’s not chasing literary language (or her two speedy pre-teens), she edits dig! Magazine, Winnipeg’s little-jazz-engine-that-could.

Charlene will be joined this evening by musicians Steve Kirby (bass), Will Bonness (electric piano) and Shannon Kristjanson (flute) whose performance will be interwoven with the reading.

View the trailer for this book here.