Tombolo Books is thrilled to welcome back Erin Slaughter to the bookstore to hear more about her new memoir, The Dead Dad Diaries. Part true-crime story, part poetic meditation on seeking to know a parent posthumously, The Dead Dad Diaries confronts the impact of domestic violence and hereditary addiction on a family lineage, and questions the extent to which we can trust the stories we tell ourselves about our memories, our lives, and the people in them.

Slaughter will be back in conversation with Tombolo Bookseller and author, Rachel Knox! 

More about The Dead Dad Diaries 

Erin Slaughter's father was murdered by his newlywed wife the night before Erin's senior year of high school began. In the years following, her family was fractured by cancer, alcoholism, and estrangement, and Erin entered her coming-of-age attempting to leave the trauma of the murder in her past (except when she joked about it inappropriately to new friends and on first dates), while secretly navigating her own struggles with addiction and mental illness.

As she sought to understand her father's complicated past and how it led him to marry the woman who killed him, Erin became the collector of artifacts and retracer of family histories, redefining the "five stages of grief" for her own fragmented experience.

Erin Slaughter is the author of the short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us (Harper Perennial, 2023), and two books of poetry: The Sorrow Festival (Clash Books, 2022) and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her debut memoir, The Dead Dad Diaries, is forthcoming from Autofocus Books in September 2025. Her writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, CRAFT, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD from Florida State University, and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Coastal Carolina University. Find her online at erin-slaughter.com

Rachel Knox is a writer and bookseller born and raised in Tampa Bay. She holds a BA from the New School in Manhattan and an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of South Florida. She is the author of the forthcoming debut essay collection ANYWHERE ELSE: Essays On Florida, out in March 2026 from the University Press of Florida.