Field Notes from Grief: The First Year

Field Notes from Grief: The First Year will be celebrated with a public reception Friday, May 11 from 6:30 – 9 pm at Monongalia Arts Center.

Field Notes from Grief: The First Year is a unique collaboration by author Judith Gold Stitzel and artist Claudia Giannini based on the private journals Stitzel kept during the year after her husband's death. Stitzel and her husband had been married for 47 years.

Stitzel is a retired professor of English and Women's Studies at West Virginia University where she and her husband Bob started their teaching careers in 1965 and where she was the founding director of the WVU Center for Women's Studies. She has published fiction, nonfiction and literary criticism in Colorado Quarterly, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, College English, Green Mountain Review, and other journals and anthologies. She has an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College and has twice been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Giannini holds an M. Ed. in museum education and has worked in the museum field since 1981. She received her MFA degree from West Virginia University in 1999 with specialization in printmaking and photography. She has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for Creative Arts and participated in a residency at Artists Image Resource in Pittsburgh sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. Giannini has exhibited her work widely in galleries throughout the country, and her work is included in public and private collections.

Field Notes from Grief: The First Year will be on display in MAC's Benedum Gallery through Saturday, June 2. An artist's talk, reading, and book signing will be held during the public reception from 7 – 8 pm Friday, May 11.

For more information please visit www.monartscenter.com, or call (304)292-3325.