2 January 2017
This year, we were obliged to say goodbye to a number of literary luminaries, from the wonderful poet C.D. Wright to Leonard Cohen to Katherine Dunn, the woman who has saved the lives of an uncountable number of teenagers. The only real comfort is that these poets, novelists, and masters of the short story have produced work that will stay with us for many years to come, and so instead of grief, we can feel thankful for the lives they lived and the literature they left us. Here, we say a final goodbye to some of the great writers we lost in this terrible year.