Nancy Howard Cobb, author of In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living (Random House), has interviewed poets, writers, and adventurers in print and on public radio. In Lieu of Flowers was a Books for a Better Life nominee and was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Cobb has spoken about grief, mourning, death and dying, in hospices, medical schools, bookstores, conferences and has written for The New York Times, HuffPost, More, House Beautiful & Medium.

About

Nancy Howard Cobb has interviewed a wide range of people, in print and on public radio, including Jane Goodall, Jonas Salk, Chuck Yeager, Studs Terkel and Shelby Foote for the tenth anniversary of the Discovery Channel. Her first book, How They Met (Random House, Turtle Bay Books,), chronicled the meetings of thirty couples, among them: Jay and Mavis Leno, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, Jack and Felicia Lemmon, Carol and Walter Matthau. As the host of two public radio programs, Connecticut Voices and The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Cobb  interviewed writers and poets including Arthur Miller, Annie Dillard, Maurice Sendak, Richard Blanco, William Styron, Natasha Trethewey, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, Richard Wilbur, Christian Wiman, Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz, Suji Kwock Kim, and Galway Kinnell. A former actor and documentary filmmaker, Cobb is also the author of The Kids’ Letter Writer Book illustrated by Laura Cornell.  She recently relocated from New York City to La Jolla, California.

“These are conversations that take on a therapeutic life of their own, for poet and questioner.”

“Every interview, an extraordinary blessing in my life. As a result, I often turn to poetry for solace, inspiration, perspective … and hope.”

“Grieving is as natural as breathing, for if we have lived and loved, surely we will grieve. . . .” Nancy Cobb meets death in the most vital of places–in the lives of everyday people–and in doing so has found a way to infuse this darkest subject with light. Her candor and refreshing perspective make the deaths of those she has loved–and death itself–a subject to explore rather than to avoid. 
Cobb’s personal experiences become a point of departure for what amounts to a longer conversation about loss. In telling stories about encounters with grief, Cobb opens us up to our own experiences, and she encourages us to accept and honor the “divine intersections” where the living meet the dying.

An elegant book…that lets readers know they aren’t alone. 

--Wall Street Journal

“Mesmerizing. Cobb is down to earth, funny, disturbingly direct.”

--Detroit Free Press

In Lieu of Flowers is an eloquent book.  Cobb’s harrowing insistence that death be confronted without the veil of denial is made possible, and even more starkly compelling, by the grace and wit of her writing.”

--Kay Redfield Jamison

“Written with intelligence, charm, and even humor, In Lieu of Flowers enlivens our awareness that death is, after all, what binds us all together most fiercely.”

--Billy Collins