VESSELS

VESSELS is about the most unimaginable heartbreak that Daniel Raeburn and his wife had to live through. “Life after death, ” Raeburn would say; his life after his daughter was born dead. Perhaps as much as it is about grief, VESSELS is a testament to life and vitality.

Stillbirth happens to three million women every year and yet, it's still a taboo in obstetrics. Raeburn's book not only breaks this silence but challenges the expectations we have placed of gender roles in parenthood. We simply need more stories of grief from husbands and fathers to help relieve the pressures of motherhood.
We don't have a word for when parents lose a child but we have VESSELS, a deeply profound well of a book. It is of course more than Raeburn's story alone. In the same way that Joan Didion's memoir about her late husband wasn't only for widows, or CS Lewis' for widowers, VESSELS is for anyone who has had to relinquish someone they loved.

Daniel Raeburn is the author of The Imp, a series of booklets about underground cartoonists and his essays have appeared in The Baffler, Tin House, and The New Yorker. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. He teaches writing at the University of Chicago.