Writing Grief Without Cliché: Eirinie Carson on Friendship, Loss, and The Dead Are Gods

Have you ever wondered what it really means to grieve a friend—someone dazzling, flawed, and deeply loved? Or how laughter, silence, and even text messages can become part of the story we tell about those we’ve lost?

In today’s episode of Writing Your Resilience, I talk with writer Eirinie Carson about her breathtaking debut memoir The Dead Are Gods and her forthcoming novel Bloodfire, Baby. Together, we explore how writing can both preserve and transform our grief, why it’s so important to show loved ones in their full humanity, and what it means to let go of a story that once felt like holding on to the person themselves. Plus, Eirinie will share one of the most surprising things she learned about how we structure a book and the conversations it encourages as well as what gets silenced. 

Episode Highlights

• 2:50: The Power of Capturing Your Memories
• 4:15: Writing for an Audience
• 8:30: Holding Space for Your Experiences
• 11:26: The Challenges of Releasing a Grief Memoir 
• 21:00: The Relationship Between Laughter and Grief 
• 25:00: How Your Book’s Structure Impacts the Way You Market It 

Resources for this Episode: 

• Preorder Bloodfire, Baby
• Skunk Anansie

Eirinie’s Bio: Eirinie Carson is a Black British writer living in California. She is a mother of two children and sits on the board of The Writers Grotto in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in LitHub, Mother Magazine, The Notre Dame Review, Mortal Mag, Electric Literature, The Sonora Review and others.  She was the NEA Distinguished Fellow at the Hambidge Center, and she and her work have been supported by Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Eirinie's first book, The Dead Are Gods (Melville House, 2023), was critically acclaimed by Oprah Daily, Nylon Magazine, Shondaland and The Washington Post as well as winning a Zibby Award. It was also named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2023.

Connect with Eirinie:

Website: www.eiriniecarson.com

Instagram: @eirinieeee

Bluesky: @eirinieee.bsky.social

Tiktok: @eirinieeee

Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
Website | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn

Produced by Espresso Podcast Production

Transcript

Transcript for Writing Your Resilience Podcast Episode 89

Writing Grief Without Cliche: Eirinie Carson on Friendship, Loss, and The Dead Are Gods

Have you ever wondered what it really means to grieve a friend—someone dazzling, flawed, and deeply loved? Or how laughter, silence, and even text messages can become part of the story we tell about those we’ve lost?

In today’s episode of Writing Your Resilience, I talk with writer Eirinie Carson about her breathtaking debut memoir The Dead Are Gods and her forthcoming novel Bloodfire, Baby. Together, we explore how writing can both preserve and transform our grief, why it’s so important to show loved ones in their full humanity, and what it means to let go of a story that once felt like holding on to the person themselves. Plus, Eirinie will share one of the most surprising things she learned about how we structure a book and the conversations it encourages as well as what gets silenced. This is a tender, honest, and at times, surprisingly joyful conversation about love, loss, and the power of writing to help us live with both. 

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:08]
Well, hello, Eirinie. Welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I'm so excited to have you on today.

Eirinie Carson [0:56]
Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:59]
It's my joy to see you again, because we got to work together at the San Francisco Writers Conference, where we had a chance to talk about your book The Dead Are Gods. I am so excited to revisit that conversation and take it a little deeper, because this book is amazing.

You just have this beautiful voice and this wonderful way of honoring your friend Larissa and taking us into this relationship. But before we go into that, I always like to give my guests an opportunity to share what they’d like us to know about themselves—and then also about their book.

Eirinie Carson [1:37]
Oh, what a great question. I am a Black British writer. I'm from London. I live in the Bay Area now, and I'm a mother of two small people and wife of one big person. Yeah, that's me in a nutshell.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:55]
And you've had this very storied life. Before you were a mother to two small people and a wife to a big person, you were working on another project, which we'll talk about at the end. But before that, you had a whole life—and Larissa was a part of it.

I want to dive into your book and begin by saying I love it for so many reasons. One, there are so many intersections between your experience and mine: the music we listened to, like Skunk Anansie—one of my favorite bands—and other cultural moments of the time. While I wasn’t a model, you had all these rich experiences with Larissa.

So, when you were thinking about writing about friendship and grief—a topic that doesn’t get written about nearly enough—what inspired you to write this book?

Eirinie Carson [2:50]
Well, it was kind of accidental, to be honest. It started as a eulogy for Larissa’s funeral, and it just spiraled out of control. I couldn’t stop writing, and it never began as a book project. It began as therapy and catharsis.

I think that, to be honest, saved me from what I’m dealing with now while writing my second book, which is thinking about the audience a little too much. When I was writing The Dead Are Gods, the audience was either Larissa or myself. That’s what got it started.

I also think when someone dies, you’re left holding so much by yourself. There were so many shared stories, and I was worried about losing them. A lot of this was just a desire to be a historian and archivist—to get it down before I forgot or misremembered it. That was the genesis for me.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [3:41]
I love how you talked about the difference between Book One and Book Two, and how your first book had this organic beginning. It started with a eulogy, and then you couldn’t stop writing—it just kept expanding until it became a book.

Now, because you’ve been through the publishing process, there’s a little audience sitting on your shoulder as you write. What lessons did you learn about writing a book and how to ignore—or work with—that idea of audience differently between The Dead Are Gods and the new book you’ll publish in 2026? And please share the title of that book with us.

Eirinie Carson [4:30]
Yeah, the title of the next book is Bloodfire, Baby. It’s fiction—because when you write memoir, the first thing you want to do next is write something that isn’t tied to fact or your personal life.

But the funny thing about writing is you end up coming back to yourself anyway. With The Dead Are Gods, I only thought about audience when my editor at Melville House said, “You know, people are going to read this.” I was like, “Oh, shit. Someone’s going to know.” Until then, it was such a solitary act.

That’s something first-time authors talk about a lot: you have this private thing on your laptop, and then one day it’s out in the world. Once it leaves your laptop, it’s no longer just yours.

So, for this second book, I have a much better understanding of what it means to release a book—literally release it into the world like a wild thing. That’s what this art form is meant to be: consumed. I’m more aware of that responsibility and how it will feel.

But it’s a double-edged sword. Thinking about audience too much can freeze you. You start catering to an imagined audience and lose your voice. So, when I write this second book, I meditate before I begin to get back into my own head—so I’m not writing for bloggers, magazines, and podcasts I now know exist, but for myself.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [6:29]
Yes, I love that you’re using meditation to center yourself in your own voice, rather than in the imagined heads of people who may form opinions about your work.

Whether it’s creative nonfiction or fiction, some aspect of your story is always personal. Even if your characters aren’t you, there’s always a haunting question or emotional truth from your own life woven into the work.

Giving yourself space to explore that deeply is important. Once that’s done, then you can ask: “How is this serving the story? How is this serving my audience?” That balance is essential.

And I love that we’re starting this conversation at the “end” of the process, because grief makes it hard to let projects go. For listeners who don’t know Larissa, could you share when she died, so we can understand how recent this loss was for you?

Eirinie Carson [7:49]
Yeah, Larissa died in 2018. It was sudden—we didn’t know it was coming. I went to her funeral in November 2018 in Paris, which was where she lived and died.

It feels like both seconds ago and a millennia ago. In writing The Dead Are Gods, I sort of entombed her in the book. Now my grief has this dual life: it’s mine, but it’s also out in the world.

The book was published in 2023, so it was about five and a half years from conception to publication. And because I hadn’t intended it as a book at first, I was writing for myself. But one risk of writing your trauma is being retraumatized by a stranger.

I had a therapist I loved during my book tour, and we worked closely so I felt prepared to discuss Larissa at length—and then hold space for grieving audiences during Q&As. People really wanted to share, because our society gives us so few places to grieve. I often carried their stories, which was heavy.

So, I learned a lot about boundaries and keeping myself safe. Even though Bloodfire, Baby is fiction, it deals with postpartum grief and psychosis—terrain that’s a minefield for me as a twice-postpartum person.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [9:57]
Yes, learning how to hold space for your own experience while letting others have theirs is such a big part of self-care during publication.

When I think about my own writing on grief—particularly about my brother’s death by suicide—I notice how different timelines feel. He’s been gone almost 30 years, but that grief still lives on the page. In fact, our relationship sometimes feels stronger there than it was in life.

I see this in other writers too: sometimes the relationship on the page feels so alive, it becomes precious. Letting it go feels like letting the person go again. Did you experience that with Larissa?

Eirinie Carson [11:26]
I definitely resonate with what you said about your brother, Joe.

One of the central questions in The Dead Are Gods is: how well can we ever know the people we love? Now that Larissa is gone, in some ways I feel I know her better. Secrets emerged during writing that I may not have recognized if she were alive.

I’ve processed her death on my own, without the push-pull of an ongoing relationship. That’s given me space to heal around the way she died. Her death also connected to my own family’s history with substance use, which brought unexpected healing.

Of course, I’d give all of that healing back to have her here. But one of the strange gifts of grief has been knowing her in a deeper way than when she was alive.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [12:42]
Yeah, that has definitely been my experience. And I think there's something about the person not being able to hide, as you just said, and being able to hold space for what their experience is—without the frustrations that sometimes come with being in a relationship with someone—that allows us to hold them more gently.

And one of the things you do so well in The Dead Are Gods is show how grief can be solitary. Obviously, this is your story. But when we’re exploring our stories, the people who are gone no longer have a voice. You gave Larissa a voice in your book by doing something unique structurally: you included her text messages throughout.

When we were at the San Francisco Writers Conference, the number in my head was around 4000—I don’t know if that’s right. But how many of these text messages did you go through to decide which ones belonged in the book?

Eirinie Carson [13:48]
Oh my God, so many. I don’t even have a number. If I said 4000, it was hyperbole—but it’s up there for sure.

When I realized this was becoming a book, I found the manuscript was very sad. And Larissa wasn’t a sad person. She was brilliant and alive. I wanted some of that life to show up in the pages, a breath between chapters.

So, I turned to our emails and texts. I had so many, and I tried to pick the ones that spoke to the chapter they preceded. That way, it wasn’t just a eulogy of my grief—you could hear her. You could hear how she talked, her grammar mistakes, her silliness, her beauty. If I had only told you about her, it wouldn’t have been as poignant.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [14:50]
Yes. And when we think about writing and storytelling—and the concept of “show, don’t tell”—eulogies often put the person who’s gone on a pedestal. They become a highlight reel: the best, most perfect version of who they were.

But in storytelling, we can’t create characters that way. It’s boring, and it’s not real. You could have written, “Larissa took forever to get ready,” or “She did things that inconvenienced me.” We’d understand that in one way. You could even build a scene around it.

But by showing those text messages—the timestamps, the back-and-forth—we feel it on another level. They reveal the lived texture of your relationship, those small moments that can’t be recreated by summary.

Eirinie Carson [16:01]
Yeah, I’m so glad you felt that. That was my hope. She wasn’t a perfect person, and remembering her as some flat, eulogized figure would have been a disservice.

Some of the most fascinating things about her weren’t palatable—but I loved them anyway. So, I wanted to share the image of a flawed woman. That’s who I loved. That’s who I wanted to show.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [16:30]
And I think the fact that you did that allowed me to love her too. Because I got to see all of her. The intimacy of your friendship came through so beautifully.

Eirinie Carson [16:41]
Thank you. I wanted people to love her. She was dazzling. Most people who met her thought she was the coolest of the cool—and she was. But I also wanted readers to know her soft underbelly: the nerdy nicknames, the terrible TV, the nuance of her.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [17:07]
Yes. And one of the things that gave me the clearest picture of your intimacy was the way you wrote silence. Silence is hard—hard to write, hard to live through if the bond isn’t strong. But clearly, you two had a comfortable relationship with silence.

When you wrote about it, what did you think about in terms of craft?

Eirinie Carson [17:30]
There was the silence we shared in life—the quiet of friendship. That was mostly wonderful, though not always. And then there was the silence she left when she died.

When she was alive, her silences never hurt me. They were part of our bond, proof of trust. In her death, I had to translate what silence could mean.

In the early chapters, you can feel that echo—the loneliness of me talking to myself, trying to process this raw grief. Later, the silence begins to feel almost like divination. As if, by then, the reader and I have learned Larissa’s voice well enough to hear her in the quiet. It becomes a conversation with her, even though she’s gone.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [18:52]
I love that. And I love how you brought in voice. At the San Francisco Writers Conference, we got this extemporaneous moment where you played us Larissa’s laugh. It was such a gift.

I don’t know if you have your phone handy, but I’d love for us to hear it again. It would be a perfect setup for the next question I want to ask.

Eirinie Carson [19:20]
I sure do. Better believe it—I’ve backed up this chat a million times because I’m terrified of losing it.

A little prelude: she’s laughing about a silly joke someone told. The guy’s name was Jim, and after sex he’d say, “How did you like your gym workout?” That’s what she’s referencing. All right, let’s see if we can get it.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [19:58]
Oh my God. Everybody.

Eirinie Carson [20:21]
All right, it goes on for a full minute. Then there’s a pause, and she starts again—still laughing uncontrollably. She had the world’s best laugh. It was completely contagious.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [20:36]
Oh my gosh. I love hearing it every single time, because she feels so vibrant and alive.

When I was preparing for this, I tried something new. As someone who’s learning to read the Akashic Records, I asked, “What am I supposed to ask her about?” This wasn’t on my original list of questions—though I always share those. But the question that came through was: What does laughter have to do with grief?

As you hold space for that, what do you think the answer is?

Eirinie Carson [21:09]
Oh my gosh. Wow. What a question.

When I hear her laugh, there’s something so alive about it. There’s no other sound like it. After so much crying, being forced to laugh with her feels like a gift.

Hearing her laughter, specifically, brings me back to love. In my grief journey, I’ve gone to so many places—anger, fear, deep sadness. But her laugh cuts through all that. It takes me back to her essence, to what I loved most. It makes me smile and laugh too.

So, I think grief doesn’t have to be endlessly sad. It can have these moments of levity—moments where we laugh together.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [22:01]
Yes. And I think of what sometimes happens right after a funeral—those bursts of laughter among the bereaved.

When my brother died, it was incredibly heavy, because of how he died and the circumstances around it. But after his funeral, we went back to my grandmother’s house—me, my mom, my dad, and my brother.

We started telling ridiculous stories about him. We were very feral kids—very Gen X. The kind of kids who’d be sent out to roam until the streetlights came on. There were bullies in our neighborhood, and we weren’t going to stand aside. So, our “weapon” was a pickaxe. Ridiculous, right?

Eirinie Carson [22:58]
One pickaxe for all three of you?

Lisa Cooper Ellison [23:02]
One pickaxe for all of us. And the pickaxe was about two and a half, maybe three feet tall. My brother Joe was usually the one carrying it—and he was about three feet tall himself.

So, picture this tiny kid, six or seven years old, walking down the street with a pickaxe. Ridiculous, right? And yet so funny to imagine. It didn’t take away the heartache, but as I think about his death, I realize this: the tears connect me to the love, and the laughter connects me to the life.

Eirinie Carson [23:48]
I love that. But I do want to know—where did you even get a pickaxe?

Lisa Cooper Ellison [23:55]
We had one underneath the house. We were the kids who had gasoline and a pickaxe and all kinds of questionable stuff lying around. We got into a lot of trouble.

We also had sticks and rocks, but we thought, you know, a pickaxe is pretty effective. Swing it once, and the bullies don’t come back a second time. And yeah—it worked.

Eirinie Carson [24:20]
That is lethal. And I’m just imagining strangers walking by, seeing this tiny kid with a pickaxe, like, what is going on? That’s so funny.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [24:30]
Yeah, you don’t see a lot of kids with pickaxes these days. It’s just not happening.

Eirinie Carson [24:35]
Rare. Definitely less pickaxe work going around.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [24:40]
So, thinking about Larissa’s life—and your book, which has been out long enough for you to already have another book on the way in 2026, which is so exciting—what’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish someone would?

Eirinie Carson [24:59]
Yes. Oh, what a question.

I can’t remember if we talked about this at the Writers Conference—I’m having déjà vu—so stop me if you’ve heard it before. By omission, a purposeful omission, I didn’t talk much about how Larissa died during promotion for The Dead Are Gods.

I made that choice because in the book it’s the very last thing you learn about her. I wanted readers to love her before placing stigmas on her. And I’m glad I did that. But I also wonder—was that choice about Larissa? Or was it about me, maybe being scared to talk about it?

If I could do the tour again, I think I’d talk about it more. I’m happy to now, since the book has been out almost two years. She died of a heroin overdose. I didn’t know she was using heroin.

Memory is so strange. I wrote this whole book, sold it, published it—and later, mutual friends reminded me that we had talked about intervening. She was missing for a week before she was found. During that time, we were furious and worried, planning what to do. I went back through our texts and saw the word “intervention.”

So, while I didn’t know about the heroin, I did know something was wrong. And in my grief, it’s like an airbag deployed—buffering me from the full impact until I was ready.

Looking back, I wish I had given more space to the way she died right from the start. I thought I was honoring her by saving it for the end, but maybe I shoved it into the shadows again. I didn’t want it to be taboo or stigmatized. I wanted people to hold both truths: yes, she died this way—but she was also so much more.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [27:34]
Yes, we did touch on this at the conference, and I’m glad you brought it up again. You can’t say these things enough.

Many listeners here are writing books and wrestling with how to create narrative tension. You used Larissa’s death as the hook—it keeps the reader engaged. And it works. But then, during promotion, you can’t talk about the very thing you most want to—ending the stigma around addiction—without giving away the mystery.

And heroin addiction, in particular, is brutal. Opiates take over someone’s life in ways that are almost impossible to fight.

Eirinie Carson [28:40]
Yes, exactly. In fact, in earlier drafts of the book, I hadn’t included the way she died at all. And something felt missing.

What I hadn’t realized was that by avoiding her death, I was also avoiding my own family’s story. My father used heroin throughout my childhood. He’s sober now—thank goodness—but that history still lives in me.

I couldn’t advance the draft. I knew the ending—I always write my endings first—but I couldn’t get there. A friend suggested I try writing about my father, about Larissa’s actual death. So, I did. And it unlocked everything.

It helped me see why Larissa’s death hurt so much—not just because I loved her, but because it connected directly to my father’s addiction and my childhood trauma.

Now I’m in this complicated place of building a relationship with my father, someone I never thought I’d spend time with. And honestly, part of me wishes it were Larissa instead of him. But writing it all out showed me what grief really requires: you have to go into the hard places if you want to heal.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [30:16]
Absolutely. And you raise such an important point: grief often unlocks other wounds in our lives. Loss doesn’t stay in its lane—it connects us to old pain.

That’s deeply uncomfortable, but it also offers opportunities for healing if we’re willing to look at it.

And what I love about your process is that you didn’t just push forward with a “done” draft. You stopped, did the deeper work, and let Larissa’s death and your father’s history converge on the page. That unlocked the story.

For our listeners, this is gold: we’re talking not just about the book itself, but about how a book is built. Even if we “spoil” an ending here, the richness is in understanding how you arrived there.

Eirinie Carson [31:43]
Yes, I agree. No bad spoilers.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [31:47]
And I love that you write your endings first. I’ve done that with a current project, and once I know the ending, I know where I’m headed. Otherwise, especially in memoir, you can end up with 400 pages of chaos and no shape.

It doesn’t work for everyone, but if you know your ending, it can be a powerful way to write.

Eirinie Carson [32:22]
Totally. And the ending can shift a little once you arrive. But for me, endings always come first. They’re my destination. Then I can trace my way back.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [32:37]
Yes. Some people like to write forward, but that structure makes sense.

So, when you think about your novel Bloodfire, Baby—coming in 2026—did you also know the ending first?

Eirinie Carson [32:51]
Yes. Truly, endings are always the first thing I write. I knew the last paragraph of Bloodfire, Baby, and it’s basically unchanged from the draft to the final version.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [33:05]
Well, I love your style, your voice, the way you put words together. I cannot wait to read your novel.

And for listeners, the preorder period is here! You’ll find links in the show notes to order Bloodfire, Baby as well as The Dead Are Gods.

Also in the show notes: how to connect with you. Where should people go to keep up with your work?

Eirinie Carson [33:34]
My website, eiriniecarson.com—I try to keep it updated with events and news. I’m also on Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes TikTok. My name is unique enough that I’m easy to find.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [33:50]
I can’t imagine there being another you. You are such a bright light, and I love what you bring to conversations about grief. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Eirinie Carson [34:08]
Thank you. I really appreciate being here—and I loved learning more about Joe and the pickaxes.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [34:16]
Thank you so much.