The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Every human being experiences grief. If we stop trying to overcome it and start trying to befriend it, we'll unlock greater resilience, connection, agency, and meaning.

Award-Winning Poet | Author, The Flower Bearers, Promise, Seeing the Body

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Rachel Eliza Griffiths on “Fortune Favors” (11:00)

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Rachel Eliza Griffiths on “Seeing the Body” (51:42)

Lavin Exclusive Speaker

Grief is a part of humanity that we all share, says Rachel Eliza Griffiths. It can pull us under—but if we stop trying to “get over” it and start trying to understand and even befriend it, we’ll emerge with greater resilience, empowerment, curiosity, and joy. Rachel Eliza is an award-winning poet, artist, and writer whose debut memoir, The Flower Bearers, charts her journey through the death of her chosen sister and the near-fatal attack on her husband, Salman Rushdie. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, The Flower Bearers is “stunning” (Publishers Weekly), “extraordinary” (Booklist), and “a raw and open tribute to courage” (The Observer). In moving, vulnerable keynotes and conversations, Rachel Eliza shares her personal story and encourages audiences to share stories and art, to generate and offer new perspectives and ideas, to participate in active listening and storytelling—all as a means of finding new ways to reframe and accept loss. “Grief and joy are a continuum, not isolated things,” she says. “In a world that feels intensely dehumanized, I hope that our conversation can exist as a site that is restorative, warm, sincere, and positive.”

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a multi-media artist, poet, novelist, and memoirist.

Her literary and visual work has been widely published in journals, magazines, anthologies, and periodicals including Harper’s Bazaar, British Vogue, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, BOMB! Magazine, Poets & Writers, Best American Poetry 2020, 2021), The Guardian, and many others.

She received the MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and is the recipient of numerous fellowships including Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Kimbilio, Cave Canem Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and Yaddo.

In 2020, Rachel Eliza was chosen as the poet-in-residence at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

Rachel Eliza’s hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Seeing the Body (W.W. Norton 2020), was selected as the winner of the 2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Poetry, the winner of the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the NAACP Image award.

In 2022, Rachel Eliza served as the image designer for the libretto, Castor & Patience, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith and composer Gregory Spears, which premiered at the Cincinnati Opera House.

Her debut novel, Promise (Random House 2023) was a Kirkus Reviews and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year.

Rachel Eliza was the Executive Producer and Cinematographer for the documentary, Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, directed by Academy Award-winning director, Alex Gibney, which premiered at Sundance in January 2026.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, Rachel Eliza’s highly acclaimed debut memoir, The Flower Bearers, was published by Random House in 2026.

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Derek Thompson

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Clint Smith

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Speech Topics

Mental Health and Fitness

Befriend Your GriefUnlocking Resilience, Connection, and Joy Through Loss

What if the key to resilience isn’t overcoming your grief, but learning to live alongside it? Every human being experiences loss, says poet and memoirist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. But if we stop trying to push through it and start engaging with it with curiosity and agency, we’ll emerge stronger, more compassionate, and more connected on the other side.

Rachel Eliza is an award-winning poet, artist, and author whose debut memoir The Flower Bearers—a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice—chronicles her journey through the death of her chosen sister and the near-fatal attack on her husband, Salman Rushdie. She draws on her powerful body of work, alongside her own personal story, to offer keynotes and conversations that leave audiences changed.

Drawing on her experience, research, and twenty years of artistic practice, Rachel Eliza shows audiences how to befriend their grief rather than fight it—and what becomes possible when they do. Audiences will discover how loss, approached with curiosity and community, becomes a source of agency, empathy, and unexpected joy—and walk away with the sense that we each have a voice and a story that is of value to the greater good of our cultures.

Leadership

The Art of Meaningful ConversationThe Power of Words in a Distracted World

In an era of throwaway language and weaponized words, the art of the meaningful conversation—one that creates genuine connection, holds space for difficulty, and leaves both people changed—has become one of a leader’s greatest tools.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths has spent her life working with language: as a poet, novelist, and the author of The Flower Bearers, a memoir praised for its extraordinary precision and emotional courage. “Words have been my armor and shield, but also my bridge to other people and experiences,” she says—and in powerful talks, she shows individuals and teams how to have meaningful conversations about grief, joy, loss, and the whole range of human experience.

In this authentic, honest keynote, Rachel Eliza explores what it takes to have conversations that actually matter, and what we gain when we learn to talk to each other. Audiences will leave with a renewed sense of the power and responsibility of language, and practical inspiration for cultivating the kind of honest, generous storytelling that builds real connection and community.