New York Times bestseller Amy Bloom on her husband’s choice to end life on his own terms following his Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

New York Times bestseller Amy Bloom has won international acclaim for her novels, essays, children’s books and short stories, with Roddy Doyle calling her ‘one of the USA’s most consistently brilliant writers’.

Her powerful new non-fiction work, In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss is an illuminating story of two people whose love and shared life experiences led them to find a courageous way to part—and of a woman’s struggle to go forward in the face of loss. When her husband Brian was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, they were forced to confront a part of life we so often shy away from: its ending. Determined to die on his feet, they made the unimaginably difficult and painful decision to go to Dignitas, an organization based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace.

The award-winning author of Lucky Us and Come To Me joins us online live from the US to discuss this heart-breaking and surprising memoir, described by Meg Wolitzer as ‘full of everything that matters… In Love is gripping, moving, and beautifully told’.

After first broadcast this stream will be available to watch on demand until Thu 31 Mar.

Amy Bloom is the author of four novels, White Houses, Lucky Us, Away and Love Invents Us; three collections of short stories, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, (all published in one volume as Rowing to Eden); and a collection of essays, Normal. She is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing at Wesleyan University. She lives in Connecticut and is available for interview and written pieces.

Dr Devorah Baum is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Southampton.  She is the author of Feeling Jewish: a book for just about anyone (Yale University Press) and The Jewish Joke: an essay with examples (less essay, more examples) (Profile), co-director of the creative documentary feature film The New Man, and guest editor of the special issue of Granta #146 on ‘The Politics of Feeling’.  She has written for a range of publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Tate Etc.  She is currently writing a book about marriage, and she is currently married.