Brookline Booksmith filled up as guests gathered at an author meet-and-greet to listen to Liz Walker speak about her new book, which documented the Roxbury community’s experiences in its journey to heal.

Liz Walker’s “No One Left Alone: A Story of How Community Helps Us Heal” is an account of a Black church that strives to give neighbors a space to share their collective pain. Walker, an award-winning journalist and pastor, published her debut novel on April 8, 2025. Walker read from her book at the Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner on Wednesday, Oct. 9. The event included an interview about her book and its origins, as well as a book signing.

“No One Left Alone” is a memoir that follows Walker, Reverend of the Roxbury Presbyterian Church, and her journey founding the Can We Talk Network, a program providing a space for church members to deal with trauma and grief. Walker was inspired to start the program after the murder of Cory Johnson, a Black man from Roxbury, along with the impact his death left on his community.

Walker started as a journalist in Little Rock, Ark. and became the first black woman to co-anchor a newscast in Boston after moving to Massachusetts. She has been inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame and has won two Emmy Awards. In 2002, her coverage of Sudan shed light on the events of the Second Sudanese Civil War and won an Edward R. Murrow Award for a News Story by the Regional Television Radio News Directors’ Association.

She later attended Harvard Divinity School and became a Pastor of the Roxbury Presbyterian Church. Since then, she has been writing her book and founded The Cory Johnson Program for Post-Traumatic Healing, which includes the program “Can We Talk.”

Following the event, Walker discussed the writing process for “No One Left Alone.” She said that her motivation for writing came from her goal of keeping people’s stories alive, such as with Cory Johnson’s mother, who struggled with the grief of her son’s death.

“I didn’t want her story ever to disappear, or that family story, because they represent so many people who meet this kind of tragedy,” Walker said.

Walker said that she originally thought of grief as the emotional pain one goes through when someone dies, but she shared how her understanding of grief evolved while writing her book.

“It is multi-layered, it covers a wide kind of wilderness of emotion, especially if it is tied to trauma, especially if it’s tied to violence. They call that traumatic grief,” Walker said.

Walker also discussed moments that stuck with her from her main outreach program, “Can We Talk.”

“You hear a lot of dramatic stories when you do this kind of thing, and painful stories,” Walker said. “But you then hear people say, ‘I’m glad that I came.’ ”

From being a journalist to becoming an author, Walker noted that she has noticed a difference between the kinds of storytelling she uses when writing about others and herself.

“There’s a freedom in writing that I didn’t really have, because my writing was to report the facts. These are the things that I saw happen,” Walker said. “But trauma is not about what you saw; trauma is how it impacts you. So I had to learn to kind of get into the emotion of it, and I’m still doing that, and that’s why I want to write this memoir. I think listening is the key to my work.”

According to Walker, being “in the zone” is gratifying when she writes. She said she admires being engrossed in writing and how that feeling can apply for almost anything.

“The best part of it for me is how you do something–and it could be running, swimming, writing, singing–everything around it can be really hard, but once you’re into it, you’re kind of in a zone. I love that part of writing,” Walker said.

Walker said that her next move is to write a memoir mainly focused on her life and story, rather than just her program, and take her writing style in a new direction with different themes, lessons and stories.

“I don’t want [my upcoming memoir] to be immersed in pain,” Walker said. “I want it to be just about the complexity of life. You go through the pain and the joy.”