Anton and Brandy Worrall-Soriano are offering a free workshop for young adult cancer survivors in Vancouver called “Cancer [Expletive] Sucks: A Workshop for the Young Adult Cancer Community” through Rabbit Fool Press.
“When I became involved with YACC in 2009 at Retreat Yourself West, I knew then that someday I’d want to do a writing workshop for this community, especially knowing how this age group of cancer patients and survivors are underserved in the realms of research and support,” said Brandy.
“I have done workshops mainly on family history, memoir, and poetry. But I do have particular themes I’d like to address in this one, like isolation, life planning, and how one deals with friends and older relatives who have a hard time understanding how someone that age could get cancer.”
The workshop will encourage people to weave their cancer narratives through their own personal narratives to create a comprehensive story through the use of weekly prompts, exercises, and even discussion.
Brandy says it’s important to incorporate all the writer’s memorable and defining experiences. In showing the whole person, the story becomes more compelling to the reader because the themes become more universal.
She said, “Cancer patients and survivors don’t exist solely as that–they’ve had other experiences to round them out as a person, and it’s all connected. What they’ve learned about themselves as they become more multidimensional through the cancer experience can be valuable for their readers.”
This workshop is suitable for writers of all experience levels who are looking for some direction on where to begin.
“The beauty of workshopping is that you’re not working alone. So everyone feeds off everyone else’s energy. A lot of times, people will come to a workshop with no idea about how they are going to spend the next six weeks in the class, but once they hear other people tell their stories, they get inspired to tell their own, and the ideas come flooding in,” she said.
Rabbit Fool Press will publish an anthology of the stories written during the workshop which will be made available through Amazon and as an e-book.
Details
The deadline for registration is January 13.
Space is extremely limited but please email [email protected] for more information.
Where: St. James Community Hall – 3214 W. 10th Ave., Vancouver
When: Sundays, February 12-March 18 from 2-5 p.m.
