Marion Winik- THE BIG BOOK OF THE DEAD

Marion Wink is esteemed for bringing humor and wit to that most unavoidable of subjects: death. At last, Winik’s critically acclaimed, cult favorites Glen Rock and Baltimore Book of the Dead have been carefully combined in their proper order, revealing more clearly than ever before the character hidden throughout these stories: Winik herself.

In The Big Book of the Dead, Winik arranges her arresting portraits of the dead chronologically, spanning “Friends of My Youth, Mostly in New Jersey 1958-1978,” “The Austin Years, Including New Orleans 1977-2009,” “We Were Ten Years in Pennsylvania 1999-2009,” and “Love in the Time of Baltimore 2009-2018.” Featuring twelve additional vignettes—including remembrances of the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting and Philip Roth—along with a brand new introduction, The Big Book of the Dead continues Winik’s work as an empathic chronicler of life. 

“Crystalline remembrances . . . By turns reverent and wry, intimate and universal, these pieces capture the essence of friends, neighbors, a tiny baby, a young man lost to fentanyl, and even a few celebrities . . . [Winik’s] mission is not to be morbid but to find a place in our collective conversation for grief, which might be one of the last social taboos . . . A welcome salve to all of us, and encouragement to honor the people we’ve lost who are forever with us.” —Oprah.com

Longtime All Things Considered commentator MARION WINIK is the author of First Comes Love, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead, and seven other books. Her Bohemian Rhapsody column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has received the Best Column and Best Humorist awards from Baltimore Magazine, and her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and many other publications. She is the host of The Weekly Reader radio show and podcast, based at the Baltimore NPR affiliate. She reviews books for Newsday, People, and Kirkus Reviews and is a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. She is a professor in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore.