num_pages: 111
description: A masterful poetic exploration of the impact of Matthew Shepards murder on the world.On the night of October 6 1998 a gay twenty-one-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard was lured from a Wyoming bar by two young men savagely beaten tied to a remote fence and left to die. Gay Awareness Week was beginning at the University of Wyoming and the keynote speaker was Lesla Newman discussing her book Heather Has Two Mommies. Shaken the author addressed the large audience that gathered but she remained haunted by Matthews murder. October Mourning a novel in verse is her deeply felt response to the events of that tragic day. Using her poetic imagination the author creates fictitious monologues from various points of view including the fence Matthew was tied to the stars that watched over him the deer that kept him company and Matthew himself. More than a decade later this stunning cycle of sixty-eight poems serves as an illumination for readers too young to remember and as a powerful enduring tribute to Matthew Shepards life.
language: English
title: October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard
publisher: Candlewick