In 2010, Adina Talve-Goodman joined our community at One Story as an intern. She returned a few years later as our managing editor, using this role to advocate for emerging writers, particularly those coming from marginalized communities. Later, while pursuing her MFA at Iowa’s Non-Fiction Writing Program and writing about her experience as a heart transplant patient, Adina was diagnosed with cancer. She passed away in January 2018, at the age of 31.

Since her passing, One Story has been working with Adina’s family to edit and collect her unfinished essays. Your Hearts, Your Scars is the result of those efforts—a book about life, loss, chance, and gratitude, published by Bellevue Literary Press.

This collection forms a unique coming-of-age story, full of humor and longing, from a young woman constantly aware that her life was only made possible by the death of another. Adina’s sister, Sarika Talve-Goodman, spent many months combing through Adina’s writing (both published and unpublished) to compile the essays included in Your Hearts, Your Scars. One Story co-founder Hannah Tinti then helped to edit the manuscript into its final form, one that Sarika describes in her introduction as “a book made of love and grief, by Adina and us.”

Posthumous writing must always be read with softness—understanding that for the author, it is a work in progress that will never be finished. That said, Your Hearts, Your Scars feels like a gift to those who might need it. The essays are beautiful, full of insight and humor as Adina explores what it means to exist in a space between illness and wellness, in a body that has been marked by difference.

In 2019, together with the Talve-Goodman family, One Story began an educational fellowship in Adina’s name, to give writers outside the fold a significant boost in their careers. With the publication of Your Hearts, Your Scars, we have another chance to share Adina’s indominable spirit, wisdom, and particular brand of magic.  She will forever be a part of our One Story family: a hero in colorful scarves and overalls, with a weakness for glitter and Cher, inspiring everyone with her powerful hearts—the one she was born with and the one she received—beating inside every word.

We hope you will support this important book and celebrate the memory of Adina with us.