STARKVILLE — While some may shy away from grief, “All Night, All Day” faces it head-on.

On Thursday, the anthology’s editor Susan Cushman and freelance writer Nancy Dorman-Hickson welcomed the Friends of the Starkville Library into a conversation about life, death and angels during a public reading of their work.

The anthology contains a series of stories, poems and non-fiction pieces on spiritual experiences and loss written by 25 female authors.

Cushman started collecting the stories almost two years ago, inspired by author Cassandra King.

Cushman began Thursday by reading the book’s introduction, which contains the story of her aunt passing away in 2005 from lung cancer that had metastasized to her brain. As she was passing, Cushman’s aunt saw three male relatives standing in the doorway, along with male peacocks. The three male relatives had passed away from cancer years prior.

“There’s something mystical about holding the hand of a person who is crossing over,” Cushman read. “It can be heartbreaking, of course, but also very holy and beautiful. Some of the essays in this collection share the grief of personal loss when a loved one dies.

Often the presence of an angel or another mystical experience is shared. And not just in death, but there are also stories here of how the mystical world interacts with daily life.”

Cushman also shared the story of the passing of her father, Billy Johnson, in the book. Johnson played on the Mississippi State baseball team in 1948 during their first national championship, and Cushman said he both started and ended his life as an athlete, as he fought cancer for the last 14 months of his life.

At the end of her father’s life, Cushman’s father struggled to eat, while Cushman and her mother attempted to feed him.

“When dad began to refuse to eat, I reminded mom of what the social worker had told us, that he was being fed by the angels as he moved away from earth and toward heaven,” Cushman read.

Nancy Dorman-Hickson, one of the contributors to the book who grew up in Starkville, shared the story of her older brother Dennis, who passed away during the AIDS epidemic.

Dorman-Hickson’s essay depicts the final conversation she had with her brother as he asks her questions about Jesus, death, and whether she loves him through his high fever and dementia.

Dorman-Hickson said she wrote her essay before she knew Cushman was putting together the anthology. She always hoped it would be published, to keep her brother’s memory alive. When she reached out to Cushman, and they discussed “All Night, All Day,” she found the perfect opportunity to share Dennis’s story.

“When I’m writing about grief, I’m bringing back that person I’m writing about,” Dorman-Hickson said. “I actually dreamed about Dennis last night because I’ve been thinking a lot about them. In a way, you’re paying tribute to them.”