Stories at the Threshold: An Hour with Tami Schwerin and the Death Faire

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Stories at the Threshold is our monthly Author Series, a circle that gathers around writers whose work meets death, grief, and the fullness of living. Each month brings a new voice, a short reading, and an unhurried conversation. It is one of the ways we practice embracing death and supporting one another with loving presence.

This month we welcome Tami Schwerin, founder of the beloved Death Faire in Pittsboro, North Carolina, and curator of the new collection Welcome to Death Faire: Love, Loss, and Healing in a Small Southern Town. What began as one small town's tender, unafraid gathering around death has grown into a movement that honors dying as part of living fully. The book carries that spirit to the page, weaving together stories, essays, poems, and images from more than thirty writers, artists, and healers, and revealing how grief can soften into grace and how a community can turn loss into love.

Tami knows this ground from the inside. Death Faire was born from her own family's grief, and in the years since she has helped a whole community learn to hold loss with honesty, creativity, and even joy. A longtime cultural builder in her corner of North Carolina, she founded the nonprofit Abundance NC and reimagined an old industrial site into The Plant, a gathering place for food, art, and community. Through it all, she has kept returning to the same question at the heart of this work: how do we meet death, and one another, more fully alive?

You can purchase a copy of Welcome to Death Faire online here. We encourage you to read ahead and come with questions.

Join Emberlight founder and executive director Aditi Sethi, herself a hospice physician and end-of-life doula, as she welcomes Tami into conversation about the faire, the book, and the quiet, surprising beauty that lives alongside loss. The hour holds a reading, an unhurried conversation, and an open Q&A. This is not a gathering only for those in grief. It is one for all of us.

This gathering is hosted online and open to anyone who would like to attend. It will be recorded and made available afterward, so if you cannot join us live, you can still receive the recording and experience the conversation in your own time.

100% of proceeds donated go to support the mission and vision of Emberlight: Center for Conscious Living and Dying.

This event is open to all, with a suggested donation of $25 so that cost is never the reason someone cannot join us. We encourage you to give what feels right and possible for you. Every contribution is a gift to Emberlight and helps sustain this work and the care at the heart of it.

Please note that all event tickets are non-refundable, except in the case that Emberlight cancels the event for any reason, a full refund will be issued.

Questions? Reach the Events Team at events@emberlightway.org.