Author & Poet Kathie Giorgio in conversation with counselor Marcia Williams at Books & Company

Description

Join us for an evening featuring local writer Kathie Giorgio in conversation with Marcia Williams, a Waukesha-area counselor specializing in traumatic grief. They will discuss Giorgio’s newest poetry collection, The Birth Of A Widow.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
The Birth of a Widow is an utterly shattering portrait of the sudden loss of a husband and a shared life that will speak to anyone who has ever loved or lost a loved one. In these poems of electric honesty, Giorgio explores how she struggles to survive her first year as a widow, using all her wisdom, humor, anger, to cross the vast sea of grief to the other shore, bringing us along with her. Kathie Giorgio captures so many aspects of widowhood, and indeed loss in general, in this deeply moving and imaginatively written collection. She examines the sudden and cruel loss of her husband in meticulous detail including the loneliness, loss of identity, and the frustrating search for meaning.

Kathie Giorgio is the critically acclaimed author of eight novels, as well as two story collections, a collection of essays, and several poetry books. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry and awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence, and the Eric Hoffer Award In Fiction. Her poem “Light” won runner-up in the 2021 Rosebud Magazine Poetry Prize and her poem, “Again”, won first prize in the Wisconsin Writers Association’s Jade Ring contest. She is a two-time winner of the Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, for her stories, “Quiet” and “Recipe”. Her short story, “Snapdragon”, was performed on stage for the Stories On Stage series at Su Teatro theatre in Boulder, Colorado. Her poem, “Harvest Moon”, was included in the Poetry Leaves exhibition in Waterford, Michigan. In a recent column, Jim Higgins, the books editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, included Giorgio in a list of the top 21 Wisconsin writers of the 21st century.

Besides being a writer, Giorgio is also the director and founder of the international creative writing studio, AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop LLC. AllWriters’ offers online and on-site courses and workshops in all genres and abilities of creative writing, as well as coaching and editing services. Thousands of writers worldwide have gotten their start at AllWriters’, and thousands have continued their career there. Giorgio has taught for 30 years. Kathie lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Visit her at https://www.kathiegiorgio.org.
 

Marcia Williams RN, MSN, MS is a Licensed Professional Counselor who has worked in the field of loss and trauma for 40 years. She does individual, family, and group interventions, has spoken at national conferences, and published articles on grief and trauma. Marcia has been certified as a Death Educator by the Association on Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) since 1998 and remains active in both ADEC and the Hospice Foundation of America. In 2020, Marcia was the recipient of Southeast Wisconsin Grief Network award for Exceptional Contribution for Community Grief Intervention.