Perhaps it is you who has had cancer and are now in remission. It could be that it is your father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparent, child, or friend who has cancer and is living with it or has had cancer and has passed with it. Maybe it is you (or someone you know) who never took a simple test, like a pap smear, and you've discovered it when it is already too late. It could be that you are barely living with it; it could be that you're dying with it. Perhaps you are the one coping with cnacer, or maybe you are coping as a loved one or a friend, even a caregiver, of someone who has cancer.
Creativity, like mediums such as art, letters, stories, and poetry, can be used to reimagine, transform, and process one's experience with cancer. It can be used to fuse the personal and the public, to ask unsettling questions that provoke thoughts or force us to dream. When a member of our team lost a family member to cervical cancer, she turned to poetry and the Cancer Journal from the late Audre Lorde for healing and transformation. Audre Lorde described her experience with coping with cancer as an opportunity to transform silence into language and action. The poet Lucille Clifton also described cancer as the dreaded word that leaves you staring at life with your own living eyes.
But what do you call it? How might you reimagine healing and transformation from an experience with cancer?
Shed light on your journey. We are calling on the fluidity of your imaginations and potency of your truth, from your poetic vision to any attempts at social justice, from the tender trees planted in gardens in memory of lives lost to the single-breath pieces that help all of us to inhale and exhale through any experience with cancer. Through your art, letter, story, or poem, those walking a similar path or in similar shoes can know they are not alone and begin the process of healing and transformation.
Submissions will be accepted via Submittable. There is no entry fee! Prize money (1st: $500, 2nd: $375, 3rd: $125) will be given to the top three contestants of each category.