When the Virus Came Calling

The 120+ poems, personal essays, and short story in this ground-breaking anthology were written in real time during the first 7 months of 2020, when COVID-19 struck America. The 45 authors in this collection were hand-selected by the editor and represent 10 states across our nation. The authors are all leaders in the field; all are published, distinguished writers, including Poets Laureate, professors of writing, poetry network facilitators, editors, publishers, and/or national award-winners. This collection includes widely diverse American contemporary poets and prose writers, sharing their experiences, observations, emotions, hopes, and reflections as they lived through the devastating COVID-19 invasion of the United States. In heart-wrenching, wide-eyed observations, firsthand events, tragedies, and forecasts of what the future holds for all of us, these top authors document for us the horrors, grief, and heroism of their frontline heroes, essential workers, friends, family, and neighbors as they watched the disease unfold and the fatalities explode, causing more deaths of Americans in a matter of months on our homeland, than the total deaths of our U.S. armed forces in combat in the modern era. Here are moments of hope and togetherness as well, seeking respite and balms. This book is a collection to treasure and a touchstone for generations to come--teachers, professors, parents, and the larger community--as our nation looks back on this tragic time and reads original-source accounts of what life was like in the most powerful nation on earth as it was brought to incalculable despair in less than a year by a historic novel coronavirus.