Peterborough author Erica Richmond explores grief through experimental and visual essay forms in her latest publication, Parenting After Suicide — a little book printed using only a single sheet of paper.
Richmond was one of four authors who gathered at Take Cover Books in Peterborough’s East City last Saturday (February 28) during the Highly Likely Festival of Music and Literature to launch new works that were published for volume two of Give a Sheet Press.
Originally conceived in 1995 by a small group of Peterborough writers to print affordable little books on a single sheet of folded paper, Give a Sheet Press was revived in 2025 with the help of Take Cover Books to produce four little books each quarter. Using a single sheet of paper, each book is 16 pages long with space for around 2,500 words on 14 printed pages. Each book is 4.25 inches tall by 3.5 inches wide (10.8 cm by 8.9 cm), assigned an ISBN, and registered with Library and Archives Canada.
Richmond is a long-time fan of Take Cover Books, which sells her children’s books Pixie and the Fox and Pixie and the Bees. So, when she saw the call out for submissions to the quarterly publication, she took the opportunity to submit a few shorter essays she has written for her full-length creative nonfiction collection Yelling at Dead People. The work-in-progress explores the aftermath of suicide and grief after the death of her children’s father through essays and other creative forms.
“I’m finding more now, but there hasn’t been a ton of places to submit visual form — you can submit photography or art, but my stuff doesn’t fit in either of these,” Richmond says, noting that she thought Give a Sheet Press might make a good home for them. “I thought having a collection of different essays as opposed to one longer one felt like the right move, and I hoped that because they’re small, we could have conversations around it.”
With cover art by Jordan Brown, the book includes two short essays and two visual essays that explores Richmond’s experience parenting through grief. One, called “Grief Lives Here,” can be unfolded out of the book to reveal a minimalist sketch of a house, where each room is represented by a conversation Richmond had with her children following their father’s death.
“I (originally) had a whole page of small snippets of conversations, and I thought I should write them all together, but then it just felt too crowded on the page,” Richmond says. “There were too many words, and it took away from the actual story.”
“Generally I have the story first and, if it can’t be told in the best way through an essay, then I will switch to something more visual. There’s a bit more room to say a lot more with less when there are visuals. I don’t have to explain that these are conversations that happened in my home because they can see the home.”
As evident through her Pixie series, which explores mental health, Richmond says including a visual offers “an extra element of protection” when exploring heavy or triggering topics and memories.
“It’s suddenly a little bit different than actually writing out exactly what happened. You can put this extra layer in there which can be helpful for both the writer and reader in a way. I really, really enjoy the visual pieces.”
In addition to hosting writing groups and leading craft sessions (including on visual forms) through her business Open Sky Stories, Richmond leads conversations around creating safe spaces to write. For her, this means ensuring she is mentally in a safe space and not publishing the stories that are “too personal,” but still being vulnerable on the page.
“(My kids and I) have always been just very open about grief and there’s never been anything off topic or that’s not allowed to be spoken of,” she says, noting humour often finds its way into even her heaviest pieces. “These situation and using ridiculously dark humour is just normal. It’s every day for me and has been for 11 years.”
Any seasoned writer knows that writing from the comfort of home is a very different experience from sending it out into the world, and even more so when sharing it on stage in front of an audience. That’s what Richmond did at the Highly Likely Festival when reading out parts of Parenting After Suicide, joining three other authors — Jessica Westhead, Kayleigh Mochan, and Avery Brown — whose works were also published in the recent volume of Give a Sheet Press.
Though Richmond was worried she would “bring everybody down” with her reading (and that she would mispronounce the Spanish words she had included in an essay), she was instead met with a supportive audience that laughed when she hoped and greeted her with conversations. (She’s confident she got the Spanish pronunciations down, too, though is leaving it up to fluent speakers to confirm.)
“It’s the conversations and other people coming up and being able to discuss and share grief and laugh together and feel sombre together — that’s what I love about stories and writing stories and sharing stories. Whenever you share yours, other people reflect theirs back to you.”
“With grief, the only way to get through it is by sharing it. You can work at grief as much as you want, but I think if you’re working at it alone, by yourself without anybody else, it’s really hard to move through it. My grief is going to be different than someone else’s, but it’s still the same idea — it’s that same heaviness.”
Beyond the conversations, Richmond says coming together with other creatives and artists throughout the Highly Likely Festival weekend reminded her about the power of art amidst things going on across the world that make us feel powerless.
“There were some tough things that people talk about (in the readings) so it wasn’t like joy, joy, happy happy, but it was still this underlying happiness that filled the space,” she says. “For me, that can only happen in a space with creatives. We have conversations in those spaces about big issues, but it’s through writing and song and lyrics that we can work through it together. I was reminded of that.”
To buy a copy of Parenting After Suicide or the other little books published by Give a Sheet Press, visit takecoverbooks.ca/give-a-sheet-press. Each book costs $5, with proceeds going to the author.
