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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...
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...
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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...
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...
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...
Essay “What A Bullet Can Do” wins 2019 Maine Literary Award
On June 13th, Maine writers, readers, editors, publishers, and librarians gathered at the Bangor Public Library for the announcement of the 2019 Maine Literary Awards. I was there to meet and mingle with the Maine writing community and to find out if "What A Bullet...
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...
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...
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.
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.