Book Celebration for Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul

A New Poetry Collection by Dr. Ann E. Wallace, Poet Laureate of Jersey City

Reading & Discussion, followed by Reception & Book Signing

This event will be held in person and on Zoom:

Gothic Lounge, Hepburn Hall 202

New Jersey City University

Register here for the Zoom Link

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Join us in celebration of Dr. Ann E. Wallace, Poet Laureate of Jersey City’s new collection, Days of Grace and Silence (Kelsay Books). A reading and discussion, will be followed by a reception with book signing. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

Sponsored by The Office of the Provost, The English Department, The Center for the Arts, The Writing Center, and The Nursing Department. 

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Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul documents the author’s day in, day out experience of living--alongside her also-sick daughters--through COVID in spring 2020 and its aftermath, with illness, pain, and healing laid against a broad backdrop of pandemic deaths, mental health crisis, and social unrest. Despite the difficult nature of the topic, hope, nature, and resilience are present throughout the collection. Indeed, the final sequences of poems, written in years two and three of the pandemic, provide a respite from the loss and sickness and looks through a reflective lens on what has become a chronic illness.

This collection is informed and inspired by Wallace’s four years of public writing and speaking about COVID and Long Covid. This has included publications in Huffington Post, USA Today, anthologies including The Long COVID Reader, scholarly journals and countless literary journals, and media appearances on Good Morning, America, CBS, NBC LX, Fox News Radio, Daily Mail TV, and more. She has met with elected officials, including Representative Ayanna Pressley and other members of Congress, and White House staff regarding Long COVID research and funding and serves on the NIH RECOVER Initiative, the nation’s largest multi-year study of the disease, since its inception in 2021.

Author Biography:

Ann E. Wallace, PhD is the 2023-24 Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. As a long-time survivor of ovarian cancer, a woman with multiple sclerosis, and one of the nation's first Long Covid patients, she has lived and written through illness for more than thirty years. Pain, disability, and disease—as well as hope and resilience—have inspired and informed her work as a poet, memoirist, patient advocate, and scholar. Her new poetry collection Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul (Kelsay Books, 2024) was written over three years, beginning when Wallace was first sick with severe acute COVID and following her teenage daughters’ and her long journey of recovery. Wallace’s first collection of poetry, Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag, 2019), is a reflection on motherhood, illness, and contemporary life in America. Wallace is co-host and co-producer of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants by the Native Plant Society of New Jersey and Professor of English at New Jersey City University.