In an op-ed for the New York Times, Spring 2020 Mary Routt Chair of Writing R.O. Kwon reflected on her attempts to write during the upheaval of the coronavirus pandemic and the grief she discovered was stymying her writing process. “…because many Americans weren’t talking about grief before the pandemic, we don’t know how to name it, let alone voice it,” Kwon writes. “I hope, in this extraordinarily difficult time, to be better than I’ve been at letting myself mourn. I’ll start at the beginning: This is hard. I hurt. If you’re hurting, too, you’re not alone.”