cancer

Rachel Sturges looks into the lives of a fisherman’s daughters.

Sarah L Sanderson pauses in the midst of an anxiety-filled wait for diagnostic surgery to wonder about the presence of God.

I knew nothing of how doctors think about and practice medicine when not long ago I found myself obtaining employment as a patient advocate at Mount Sinai Health System’s Head and Neck Institute in New York City. That I, a recent graduate with a master’s degree in theology, would have much to learn about the […]

Jason Byassee reviews Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens for a Reason, a book he says takes on evil from the inside—and laughs.

Katherine James contemplates the fleetingness of beauty as she faces cancer and aging.

The magnet read, “I’m making cancer my Bitch.” It was one of the small trinkets in the cancer-survivor corner of the hospital gift shop: a cartoon sketch of a white, winking woman with bouffant hair and a plastered smile under 1950s twinkle typography. Beside bagged candy teddy bears, you could buy the magnet in the color scheme of […]

The aftermath of bodily trauma can yield unexpected revelations about oneself and others.

“Fearlessness is better than a faint heart for any man who puts his nose out of doors. The length of my life and the day of my death were fated long ago.”1—I read these lines in the Norse epic poem For Skirnis as a child and have remembered them often since. I steeped myself in […]

Allison Backous interviews the poet Christian Wiman about his work, his attention to lament and evil, and his perspective concerning the role of spirituality in contemporary American poetry.