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Content Warning: The books, essays, stories, and poems described and linked to below may serve as a starting point for book clubs, teachers, students and community groups to engage in conversations about gun violence, individual safety, and community safety. These works of literature may contain language and events that are re-traumatizing for survivors of gun violence and/or domestic or partner violence. While overtly violent images or language are not included on this website, survivors may want to proceed with caution, or consider having a trusted friend preview the material for them.
Novels—Adult
The Hate U Give
The Hate U Give is a 2017 debut novel and New York Times bestseller by Angie Thomas. Readers get to live alongside 16-year-old Starr Carter as she navigates her urban neighborhood of Garden Heights and the suburban Williamson Prep, where she attends school. A police...
Before You Know Kindness
Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian In this fictional account of an unintentional shooting, a Vermont man, who has recently begun hunting, leaves a jammed rifle in the trunk of his car during a family vacation at his ancestral home in New Hampshire,...
Novels—Young Adult
The Hate U Give
The Hate U Give is a 2017 debut novel and New York Times bestseller by Angie Thomas. Readers get to live alongside 16-year-old Starr Carter as she navigates her urban neighborhood of Garden Heights and the suburban Williamson Prep, where she attends school. A police...
The Rifle
The Rifle by Gary Paulsen In this young adult novel, an incredibly accurate Revolutionary War-era rifle is passed down and sold over the course of several generations, but no one ever checks to see if it’s still loaded. Tragedy ensues.
Chicago Public Library recommendations
Follow this link to 15 novel recommendations from the Chicago Public Library – YAY! for public libraries – to help teens process gun violence and terrorism. These books feature teen characters that teen readers can relate to.
Memoirs
The Blessing by Gregory Orr
In this compact and haunting memoir, Gregory Orr, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, shares the immediate and long-term impact of his unintentional shooting of a younger brother, when he himself was just 12 years old, while hunting with their father....
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir
This memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner and former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey takes readers on a tender, inquisitive, and insightful journey into her relationship with her Black mother, who was murdered in Atlanta by an...
Fight Like a Mother
Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World by Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is THE groundbreaking, grassroots guide for gun violence prevention advocates we've all...
Personal Essays
If I Don’t Make It, I Love You
This critical volume provides sweeping testimony from survivors of just a fraction of U.S. school shootings, beginning in 2018 and working back chronologically to the University of Texas at Austin shooting in 1966, recognized as the first mass school shooting in the...
And Nobody Died That Day
“And Nobody Died That Day,” by Norah Vawter in Memoir Magazine, about a mother who is seriously disabled from a shooting, and her young daughter (the writer), who was also shot that day and recovers more completely physically, but is never the same.
Ammunition
“Ammunition,” by Bruce Snider in The Iowa Review, about a young man trying to understand his father and his PTSD, and whether he himself wants to carry a gun.
What to Do With a Man Who Has a Story, and a Gun
“What to Do With a Man Who Has a Story, and a Gun,” by Lisa Romeo in Longreads, in which a young woman in her first serious relationship grapples with whether she can be with a man who always has a gun nearby.
What a Bullet Can Do
“What a Bullet Can Do,” by Sue Repko in Hazlitt, in which the writer relates the story of an unintentional shooting from her childhood and the various works of literature that helped her put it into context later in life.
The Gun Show
“The Gun Show,” by Sue Repko in The Southeast Review, in which the author goes to a gun show for the first time, seeking to better understand her gunsmith father.
Standoff
“Standoff,” by Sue Repko in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, in which the writer tries to imagine what’s going through the mind of the man keeping the police at bay.
Gun-Sitting
“Gun-Sitting,” by Sue Repko in Hippocampus, where the writer is teaching a group of 7th graders in her hometown. A casual comment by a student sends her back to an unintentional shooting and the gun culture of her youth. This piece considers safe storage and parental...
Our Truth
“Our Truth,” an award-winning essay by 13-year-old Sandra Parks, about gun violence in her home city of Milwaukee. Two years after her essay took third place in her school’s Martin Luther King, Jr. essay contest, she was killed by a stray bullet while in her bedroom....
9mm
“9mm,” by Rebecca Hazelwood in Hobart, where a writer wrestles with whether to buy a pistol after a beloved relative points one at her.
The Day I Told My Father to Kill Himself
“The Day I Told My Father to Kill Himself,” by Jennifer Fliss in Narratively. An adult woman looks back on a childhood marked by the perpetual threat of gun violence in a home filled with guns and an alcoholic, abusive father.
Half-Life
“Half-Life,” by Lisa Ellison in Kenyon Review Online. A woman recalls her brother and the 20th anniversary of his suicide.
Poetry
Brother Bullet
In the poetry collection Brother Bullet, poet Casandra López explores her grief in the wake of the death of her brother, Joseph, who was killed by gun violence in December 2010. Lopez takes a reader through the terrain of memory, individual and collective. From the...
Parkland Speaks: Survivors From Marjory Stoneman Douglas Share Their Stories
In Parkland Speaks, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School English and journalism teacher and yearbook advisor Sarah Lerner has compiled the experiences and responses of 40 students and 2 other teachers, in addition to her own, to...
Bullets into Bells
This book features work by well-known poets, such as Natalie Diaz, Billy Collins, Danez Smith and more, in direct response to gun violence. Each poem is followed by a reflection from a GVP advocate, survivor, or political figure. Brian Clements, one of the editors, is...
4th of July: San Bernardino 2015
"4th of July: San Bernardino 2015" and "a few notes about public grief," by Casandra Lopez at the feminist wire.
After Bullet
"After Bullet," by Casandra Lopez in Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
Poem by Poem
"Poem by Poem," by Juan Felipe Herrera in Bullets into Bells and at the Poetry Foundation website. Mr. Herrera reads the poem here.
Seventeen Funerals
"Seventeen Funerals" by Richard Blanco. Audio can be found here.
Other Nonfiction
If I Don’t Make It, I Love You
This critical volume provides sweeping testimony from survivors of just a fraction of U.S. school shootings, beginning in 2018 and working back chronologically to the University of Texas at Austin shooting in 1966, recognized as the first mass school shooting in the...
Fight Like a Mother
Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World by Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is THE groundbreaking, grassroots guide for gun violence prevention advocates we've all...
Melancholy Accidents: Three Centuries of Stray Bullets and Bad Luck
Melancholy Accidents: Three Centuries of Stray Bullets and Bad Luck by Peter Manseau Melancholy Accidents contains reprinted newspaper notices of unintentional shootings, then known as “melancholy accidents,” from 1739-1916, in chronological order. There is no single...
SHOT: 101 Survivors of Gun Violence in America
SHOT: 101 Survivors of Gun Violence in America by Kathy Shorr The increasing ubiquity of gun violence has become the norm across the world and particularly in the United States, where we have begun to hear horror after horror on a daily basis. So much so that it has...