Writing Grief Into Art

 "There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In this presentation, local author and psychologist Mary Plouffe will talk with two recently published memoirists — Melanie Brooks and Anne Pinkerton — about the journeys that gave voice to their grief in the pages of their books. 

They will discuss the transformative and redemptive process of remapping the intimate lived experience of loss into writing that addresses the shared human search for meaning. 

The authors will demonstrate how creating art that intersects with our collective experience of the world has healing possibilities for both writers and readers.

Facilitator: Mary E. Plouffe Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who has been treating children and adults for 30 years. Her private practice is in Falmouth, Maine. Mary is the author of I Know It In My Heart: Walking Through Grief With a Child.

Anne Pinkerton is the author of Were You Close? a sister's quest to know the brother she lost (Vine Leaves Press, 2023). Her essays and poems have appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Ars Medica, Modern Loss, “Beautiful Things” at River Teeth Journal, Sunlight Press, and The Bark, among other journals, as well as the anthologies,The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink and Nothing Divine Dies: A Poetry Anthology About Nature. Anne holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University. 

Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One Daughter Remaps Family, Grief, and Faith When HIV/AIDS Changes It All (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from college), and a chocolate lab.