“A reflection on death and a tribute to life”
Stefan Einhorn, professor at Karolinska Institutet and author of Konsten att fördärva sitt liv
“Interesting, entertaining and warming to the soul”
Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg, author of The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules
“A finely-balanced collection of prose and poetry”
Paul Rapacioli, founder of The Local and author of Good Sweden, Bad Sweden
See all our great reviews!
Amazon will deliver printed copies to North America and Europe. The Amazon Kindle version will be available in early June. Printed copies can be ordered from Publit in Sweden.
Raft of Leaves: On Aging, Death and Foreignness, published on May 29, 2021, is the Stockholm Writer’s Group second anthology, created in remembrance of Marti Parker, one of the founders of the Stockholm Writers Group (SWG). Being a foreigner, aging and dying were subjects of personal and professional interest for Marti, so SWG decided to gather writing on those themes. All the same, life, belonging and new beginnings peek around every page. The fiction, poetry, essays and drama include previously published and unpublished work by Marti Parker, members of the SWG and other friends of Marti’s. See the contributors.
This volume features much of the best of Marti’s non-academic writing. Her simple and direct writing style belied depths of human understanding. The characters Marti introduced to us in her first novel, Knowing Place—Gustav, Beatrice, Carlos—remain vivid, like old friends you’ve had over for coffee. Marti’s writing group colleagues witnessed the genesis and metamorphosis of her characters and retain a fondness for each one as well as a deep respect for Marti’s keen eye and mastery of prose. Many readers recognize themselves in the situations Marti depicted: making incongruous friendships, getting down to what we really need to talk about, finding joy in awkward situations. Marti Parker helped so many writers grow—in their craft and in their spirit.
View the table of contents and read an excerpt from the book.
Marti Parker (1951–2017)—researcher, teacher, novelist, poet and all-around good friend.
Marti was born in the United States and moved to Sweden in her early twenties. Together with her husband, she raised two daughters. Marti worked initially as a licensed physical therapist but continued her formal education until receiving a PhD in geriatric epidemiology. She was a professor of social gerontology and a researcher at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Stockholm.
Her day job provided the fodder for her fiction writing (under the pen names Martha Gale and M. Gale Parker), as old people just kept creeping into her stories. She wrote poetry, short fiction and novels while delving deeper into the science and art of aging. All the while, she engaged Swedish and expatriate writers in Sweden, nurturing a community of writers within and outside the Stockholm Writers Group. As well as scholarly papers, Marti published two novels—her second, Knowing Past, shortly before she died of cancer in 2017.