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Cancer

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

His Body Of Work

I loved my father’s body. It worried me, too. . . . I didn’t know what polio was, but it sounded scary, and he had survived it. This helped form my view of him as someone who could survive almost anything. Like Wile E. Coyote, he might get hurt and maimed, but he never, ever gave up.

By Doug Crandell November 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

What I Don’t Tell My Wife

There are many things I don’t tell my wife of ten years: Because she has asked me not to. Because she carries her own burdens. Because she has told me mine are too much.

By Craig Reinbold August 2023
Poetry

Chasing Hawks

After the radiation ruined her lungs, / and they’d drained fluid once a month, / then every other week, then every day, / my grandma said she wanted to go / home.

By Dana Salvador April 2023
Fiction

The Den Mother Has Her Say

Before we eat our snow cones, pet this dog. Don’t expect to earn a Wolf badge for your troubles. . . . Move slowly down the back, like you’re taking your fingers on a trip, until you get to the bulge on the haunch. Yes, it’s a tumor. Yes, it’s cancerous. Pet it like it’s nothing special, just part of the dog.

By Lance Larsen February 2023
The Sun Interview

Something In The Water

Robert Bilott On Corporate Greed And Chemical Contamination

The cows were getting sick and wasting away. They were developing tumors. Their teeth were turning black. Calves were stillborn or born with cloudy or deformed eyes.

By Tracy Frisch February 2022
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Growth

Being in remission is like air: you only appreciate it when it’s gone. After four years of not appreciating it, I’m back on Vancouver Island, where I work at the university as a cafeteria dishwasher.

By Jason Jobin November 2021
Fiction

Lawrence The Enormous

Slowly, Heidi finished the last of her champagne. She wiped her lipstick from the glass with her thumb, and something stirred inside Lawrence.

By Chelsea Baumgarten September 2021
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Inheritance

I would like to give you a metaphor that describes what it’s like to potentially pass on to one’s children a pathogenic variant that will possibly go on to kill them, but everything I am coming up with is histrionic.

By Debbie Urbanski May 2021
Poetry

Spam From The Dead

And two months after the cancer finally ate through / the last tissues that separated him from death, / I get a message from his e-mail address, / urging me to click on a link I know I shouldn’t

By James Davis May April 2021
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Something I Might Say

I read all the literature hospice brought: Give the gift of comfort and calm. Give them support, permission. Give them more than they gave you.

By Stephanie Austin January 2021