Compiled by Elizabeth Coplan
Grief Dialogues: The Book harnesses the power of words and images to combat grief. Sometimes the stories are funny. Sometimes hopeful. Sometimes inspiring. Always heartfelt, honest, and reflective. Stories on love and loss by sixty-one authors.
A portion of the proceeds of this book are donated to People's Memorial Association (PMA), providing funeral advocacy and education in Washington State since 1939, and to the Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA), ensuring consumers are fully prepared and protected when planning a funeral for themselves or loved ones across the country since 1963.
"We share this book with you as an important part of living with grief and the varying emotions that come with loss. When a family doesn't know how to start planning a loved one's funeral, I frequently ask, "Tell me about them." The stories that come forth range from wistful to angry to funny. Stories bring different memories helping people navigate the tumultuous waters of grief." - NORA MENKIN
ED, People's Memorial Association, Seattle, WA
"Elizabeth Coplan turned her personal loss and grief into art in the groundbreaking play, The Grief Dialogues. In sharing her grief, she has been able to not only start healing conversations, she teaches others who work with the grieving a deeper sort of compassion and empathy, using theatre in ways that touch the soul much differently than any classroom course. She has done so again with this book." - KAREN SMITH, VP, National Board of Directors. Funeral Consumers Alliance
About the Author
Ms. Coplan is a published essayist and a playwright. Her play productions include: Hospice: A Love Story (six week run in LA) and her post-election play Something Wicked (Seattle on inauguration night, and in LA). Her full-length play Hospice debuted in 2017, and Grief Dialogues: The Play opened the Seattle Death Salon[1] in September 2017. In June 2018, the play was performed in the Seattle area to sold out performances. The play, or a portion of the play, appeared in New York, Las Vegas, Portland, Pittsburgh, and Memphis. Grief Dialogues: The Play is part of an artistic movement by the same, using art/theatre to start a new conversation about dying, death, and grief. It invites all of us to reconsider the rhetoric and stigma around death and grief, with the understanding that death is natural and transcends race, creed, ethnicity, gender, age, & economics. Our vision is to create a compassionate, empathetic environment to share our own stories of death and grief. Our motto, Out of Grief Comes Art, emerges in our plays, films, music, visual art, poems and essays that we share with our audiences (live and online).