Ours is a community of mostly 20- and 30-somethings who've each experienced significant loss, and connect around potluck dinner parties to talk about it. We're working to turn loss from a conversation-stopper to a conversation-starter, with the goal of transforming our most isolating experiences into sources of meaningful connection and forward movement. Since January 2014, we've grown from a few dozen people to more than 4,000, active at 280+ tables in 110+ cities and towns worldwide. We've been featured on NPR's Morning Edition, CNN, O Magazine, the New York Times, and more than a dozen other publications, and as a case study in three books: The Upside of Stress by Stanford psychologist and TED speaker Kelly McGonigal, The New Better Off by author and columnist Courtney Martin, and most recently, The Power of Meaning by Emily Esfahani Smith of the Wall Street Journal.
The Dinner Party is one of three organizations behind The People’s Supper, out to strengthen our individual and collective resilience, and to repair the breach in our interpersonal relationships across political, ideological, and identity differences. Since January 20, 2017 The People’s Supper has teamed up with ordinary people, schools, faith communities and neighborhood organizations and equipped them to host 950+ suppers in cities and towns across the country, ranging from Littleton, CO, Cullowhee, NC, to Portage, MI.