Scars: An Anthology - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0982818475 ISBN 13: 9780982818473

Publisher: Et Alia Press, 2015

Synopsis

Scars: An Anthology examines the range and nuance of experience related to scars of the body. The collection assembles the writings of activists, academics, parents, patients, performance artists, physicians, poets, siblings, spouses, students, and writers. Through various genres and mediums—personal narratives, interviews, poems, academic essays, images, a review, and a performance script—contributors address self-mutilation, creating art, gender confirmation surgery, cancer, birth, brain injury, war, coming of age, pain, and love, all focusing on the central question of what it means to live with physical scars.

Renowned contributors include photographer and SCAR Project founder David Jay, AWP Award winning author Jill Christman, Piedmont Laureate Scott Huler, physician/faminist activist/author Dr. Sayantani DasGupta, author Maurice Carlos Ruffin, comedian Kelli Dunham, disability scholar and performer Jim Ferris, Hudson Valley artist Lorrie Fredette, and many more. Scars: An Anthology has been part of panels at Columbia University, The Arkansas Literary Festival, The Louisiana Book Festival, and elsewhere. 

About this title

About the Author:

Erin Wood writes and edits in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her essay "We Scar, We Heal, We Rise," was chosen as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2013. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Psychology Today, Ms. Magazine's blog, The Woven Tale Press, The Healing Muse, Tales from the South, and elsewhere.

Review:

If scars are the memory of pain, then this volume is a body of those memories recollected as stories—stories as compelling, as vivid, as dramatic as the thing, the scar, itself.

—Lisa Sanders, Yale School of Medicine, the doctor behind House, M.D. and New York Times “Diagnosis” Columnist

 

Each voice seeks to make sense of visible, tactile memories of pain, claiming scars as essential to the person they have become. Collectively, these voices give testimony to the connection between self-expression and resilience.

—Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller and At the Will of the Body

 

[These] are important stories, necessary stories; the kind of stories that make us less alone in our own skin, less alone in our moments of fear and trauma and loss.  

–Arianne Zwartjes, Detailing Trauma: A Poetic Anatomy

 

Scars digs deep, and from many directions, into what it means to hurt, to heal, to keep on going. . . .

—Yael Goldstein Love, The Passion of Tasha Darsky

 

You won’t look at your own skin the same way again.

—Matthew Hutson, The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane

About this edition

• Publisher: Et Alia Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0982818475
• ISBN 13: 9780982818473
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Wood Erin