Resisting Elegy

In this thoughtful collection of narratives, author Joel Peckham explores the transformative power of emotional and physical pain from the vantage point of a husband and parent who lost his wife and a child in an accident that left him in chronic distress. Along the way, he fills a need for a brutally honest literary examination of not only grief and suffering, but also of recovery.

Joel Peckham is Assistant Professor of English, University of Cincinnati, Clermont College. He won a Fulbright Teaching Scholarship to the University of Jordan, 2003–2004 and was a finalist for both the New Rivers MVP Prize and the Sol Books Prize in 2011. He is the author of three books of poetry: Nightwalking, Pecan Grove Press, 2001; The Heat of What Comes, Pecan Grove Press, 2008; and Movers and Shakers, Pudding House Press, 2010. His essays on grief and recovery have appeared in a number of publications including The North American Review, Brevity, Under the Sun and River Teeth. He lives with his surviving son, Darius, and his second wife, Rachael, in Huntington, WV.