One of the most acclaimed literary memoirs of recent years is "I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl" by renowned poet Kelle Groom. It's a gorgeously written and heart-wrenching book in which the author searches for self-forgiveness against a backdrop of alcoholism, the experience and aftermath of a brutal gang rape, and the loss of her son Tommy - whom she'd given up to an aunt and uncle after he was born - to infant leukemia.

That Groom has survived and is sober is evident in the glory of her prose and poetry, the latter of which includes the collections "Five Kingdoms," "Luckily" and "Underwater City." Her writing is clearly the hard-earned result of experiences and therapy-through-craft - but that Groom is singularly gifted is also true.

Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2010, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and The Writer's Almanac. Groom is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

She's also the James Merrill House Writer-in-Residence for this Spring 2014, and she will read from her work Sunday at the Stonington Library.

- RICK KOSTER

Kelle Groom,

5 p.m. Sunday, Stonington Library, 20 High St., Stonington; reception follows the reading; free; (860) 535-0658.