THE SHAPE OF WHAT REMAINS
A story about the choices one women makes as she begins to heal from intractable grief.

Like all trauma, healing happens on its own timetable, often in surprising ways. Paralyzed by grief ten years after witnessing the violent death of her six-year-old daughter, Teresa Calvano turns to Chaucer, Janis Joplin, and a monthly book group to cope.

What did six-year-old Serena Calvano see that caused her to run in the road on a clear November morning while waiting for the school bus with her mother? Teresa Calvano has spent a decade blaming herself for Serena’s violent death and wishing it was her husband, Luke who was with Serena that day, so the guilt didn’t fall so heavily on her shoulders. When her husband and friends lose patience with her failure to get back to life, Teresa turns to books, therapy, and Janis Joplin to address her continued unraveling. Is there a cure for grief? In Teresa’s world, her research and life as a successful English professor fail to offer the one thing she most wants: another day with her six-year-old daughter.

Lisa Taylor's previous publications include the poetry collection, Interrogation of Morning (2022), the short story collection, Impossibly Small Spaces released by Arlen House/Syracuse University Press in 2018, the short story collection, Growing a New Tail, and two additional poetry collections, Necessary Silence (2013) and The Other Side of Longing (2011), a collaborative collection with Irish poet and writer Geraldine Mills. She also has two poetry chapbooks.

Taylor’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction has been widely published in national and international journals, magazines, and anthologies. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in both fiction and poetry, she also garnered Best-of-the-Net nominations in both categories. Lisa won the Hugo House New Works Fiction Award in 2015 and was a spotlight feature on the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) web site and a two-time mentor in their writer-to-writer program.

Taylor holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast at The University of Southern Maine, teaches online and facilitates workshops around the country at writers’ conferences and schools and is the co-director of the Mesa Verde Writers Conference and Literary Festival.