In The Art of the Obit, award-winning journalist Sandra Martin reveals the cult and craft of obituary writing from the ancient Greeks to a wired-up 24/7 world.

In this witty exploration of our oldest biographical form, Martin punctures five long-held myths about the dead beat, chronicles the social, political, cultural, and historical impact of obituaries and explores the future of writing about the dead on the Internet and social media sites. This fascinating and provocative work proves that there’s no such thing as an uninteresting life.

Sandra Martin is the obituary columnist at the Globe and Mail. She has won the Atkinson and Canadian Journalism Fellowships and multiple National Magazine Awards. She is the editor of the critically acclaimed collection The First Man in My Life: Daughters Write about Their Fathers, and was also the co-editor of the annual Oberon Best Short Stories and Coming Attractions anthologies, and is the co-author of three books, including Rupert Brooke in Canada and Card Tricks: Bankers, Boomers, and the Explosion of Plastic Credit, which was shortlisted for the Canadian Business Book Award. A past president of PEN Canada, she lives in Toronto with her husband and her cat, Alice.

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