Stars Need Counting by Concetta Principe meditates on questions of suicide in the mode of A. Alvarez, when he says, in A Savage God, that there are no answers to these questions, because suicide is a “closed world” — so closed that it's not our place to judge or cast shame. These essays explore the quality of what is closed about this world, bring it close enough to scrape the shame off the act, and for both those who have passed and those who survive, offer peace.

Concetta Principe is a writer of poetry and creative non-fiction, and scholarship on the impact of the secular unconscious on culture and political thought. Her recent collection, This Real (Pedlar Press 2017) was long-listed for the League of Canadian Poet’s Raymond Souster Award. Her essays, “Who Shot Meriwether Lewis?” was long-listed for the 2019 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Award at The New Quarterly, and “I Title it ‘Suicide Letter’” was short-listed for The Malahat Review 2019 Constance Rooke award. Her poetry and creative non-fiction has appeared in Canadian and American journals including The Malahat Review, The Capilano Review, experiment-o, and Hamilton Arts and Literature. Her collection, Stars Need Counting: Essays on Suicide, is available from Gordon Hill Press. Her academic monograph exploring trauma in contemporary secular thought, Secular Messiahs and the Return to Paul’s Real: A Lacanian Approach, came out with Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. She teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at Trent University, Durham.

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