I could say, “I wanted to see the Vermeers,” but, in truth, I needed to see them. And so, early on a chilly December morning, I passed through rural highways in West Virginia and Maryland until suburbia gave way to our nation’s capitol. Driving in D.C., never my favorite as someone now used to…
Author: Renée K. Nicholson
Renée K. Nicholson, MFA is the Director of the Humanities Center at West Virginia University. She is the author of FIERCE AND DELICATE: ESSAYS ON DANCE AND ILLNESS and two collections of poetry. She co-edited the anthology BODIES OF TRUTH: PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF ILLNESS, DISABILITY, AND MEDICINE.
Fractured: Form and Function in Narrative Nonfiction about Illness
When you put the search term, “medical memoir” in a Google search, you find an odd collection of “best of” lists: the ten best for pre-meds, twelve memorable, the list every aspiring physician should read, must-read memoirs about health written by women. Perhaps nothing solidifies a sub-genre quite like these lists. But as someone who…
Disfigured: The Relationship Between Craft and Content in Illness Memoir
The welt under the eyelid appeared today as it did on Friday, and on Tuesday. The week before and the week before that, going back not months but years. Officially diagnosed as idiopathic angioedema, the swelling happens in either eye, and in my lips, changing the whole look of my face into something not quite…