Creative Writing Awards

Awards 2009

Over 200 people attended the 2009 YSN Creative Writing Awards, held at the Omni Hotel New Haven at Yale on April 28. Pulitzer Prize winning author Anna Quindlen gave a rousing address as the keynote speaker. Read and listen to the audio of this year's winners - Brandon Ko '10, Elizabeth Holt '11, and Rachel Newton '13.

Listen to the audio of Anna Quindlen's keynote address at the 2009 Creative Writing Awards.

2009 Creative Writing Awards

Telling Our Stories

We nurses enjoy a remarkable degree of public trust and support yet at the same time find ourselves in a midst of yet another nursing shortage. How can this be?

Perhaps a large part of "our" collective problem is our confusion about who we are and what we do. Yes, it is true that we nurses know that our work is significant, but our inability to articulate the extraordinary privilege and power of nursing has been an important factor in our current situation. It is no longer acceptable to know our own worth and not attempt to articulate what it is that we do, see, feel and provide to our patients, families, and communities. It is time for nursing to find its voice and articulate it in every forum possible. That is why we have called upon our students to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards and tell our stories. All students at Yale School of Nursing (YSN) are encouraged to write an account of what we do so that others will have an opportunity to peer into the world of nursing.

We began fundraising for a Creative Writing Award over five years ago and in 2004 presented our first award. Our distinguished panel of judges has grown over the years and now includes: Donna Diers, former Dean, nursing leader, author and Annie W. Goodrich Professor of Nursing Emerita; Anne Fadiman, writer, essayist, editor and teacher; Suzanne Gordon, a journalist, health care commentator, and author; Echo Heron, nurse, pioneering author and activist; and Richard Selzer, surgeon, prolific writer and friend of nursing. What appears here is a sampling of the remarkable skills of Yale nursing students.

These pieces are a small glimpse of nursing, not the high tech ER celluloid image of us finding veins in cold fragile limbs. This isn't the mean, power-hungry image of Big Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or the sweet, non-confrontational nurse in Wit. This is the observant, kind, empathic, skilled, flawed and heroic image of students learning to nurse. For a few moments we held you spellbound and carried you into our world. It is a rich one that we love and respect, and that is the power of narrative. It enchants, gives meaning to one's work and life and invites others in for a peek.

For more information on the Creative Writing Awards, please contact linda.pellico@yale.edu or call 203-737-5392.