On Oct. 20, writer Edie Meidav visited the Old Chapel at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a part of the Visiting Writers Series to discuss her most recent lyric novel: “Another Love Discourse.”

The novel is about a writer living amidst a global pandemic and is focused on motherhood, love, grief and divorce. Although the book is not a memoir, Meidav admits that it is not difficult to see where she might coincide with the text.

“Part of the gamut of this book, which was kind of a survival text during the pandemic, was to do something different,” she said.

Sponsored by the MFA for Poets and Writers, the 58th year of the Visiting Writers Series welcomes four different writers to the Old Chapel to discuss their written work. Meidav’s lyric novel, as she described, had the fluidity and format of poetry, but the imagery of something else more creative and different.

“I wanted to have the kind of breath that you have in poetry… and I wanted the reader to also be startled awake in the way we all were in the pandemic, and I wanted the images to be a resting spot for the consciousness,” Meidav said.  

Meidav was interactive with her listeners, starting off by having the audience pair up with a stranger and discuss different aspects of love that she presented.

Shoba Devi Singh, a senior psychology major, said that the conversation gave her different perspectives of love, and she liked how unguarded Meidav was with her audience.

“I got a more extended view on how broad love can be. I thought it was really cool how interactive it was, it felt like I was just having a really good conversation and it felt really vulnerable in a good way,” she said.

Meidav’s inventive way of writing inspired Singh, who is also a writer, to experiment with her own writing style.

“I’d say she’s inspiring because she kind of created her own form of writing, which is really intriguing and pretty cool… because I am a writer I’m just going to do my own thing,” said Singh. 

The goal of Meidav’s lyric novel was to create something that really connected the reader with the novel.

“That’s what’s been remarkable to me about this book is people have a much more emotional response… than my other work,” she said.

Her novel “Another Love Discourse” is being sold in Amherst Books in Amherst.