2018 Creative Writing Awards
2018 Honored Students
Congratulations and thanks to our students, alumni, sponsors, judges and the Creative Writing Committee for your help in making our event successful and enjoyable.
Lisa Rich
Lisa Rich is finishing her Master’s of Nursing in midwifery and women’s health this May. She is married to the love of her life and is the mother of four fiercely wild children who make her laugh and love with her whole being, even when they don’t pick up their socks. She is currently in her midwifery integration semester on the Navajo reservation near her hometown of Gallup, New Mexico. In the beginning of her GEPN year, she once miserably stood in front a bathroom mirror and cried while she asked her reflection, “Why did you do this to yourself?!,” over and over again. Now, on most days, she looks in the mirror and sees a burgeoning midwife looking back. She is grateful to everyone who could see her, even when she couldn’t see herself.
Read the full text of her essay here.
Moya Anne Meckel
Moya Anne Meckel received her Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities in 2003. She entered the GEPN program at YSN in 2005. There, under the watchful eyes of Linda Honan, she became a nurse, and then spent ten years as a critical care RN prior to a return to Yale in the fall of 2017. Her passion is collaboration to improve nursing education and nursing care in rural and underserved areas around the world, and representing nursing in executive leadership. She may be ‘nurse’ to the outside, but her proudest job is ‘mama’ to two little ones at home. Moya is the 2018-2019 Yale School of Nursing SGO President, and she will graduate in the spring of 2019 as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner with a concentration in Global Health.
Read the full text of her essay here.
Rachel Blatt
Rachel Blatt received her BA in Anthropology from Brown University in 2009, where she wrote an award-winning thesis on bioethical considerations in India’s commercial surrogacy industry. After graduating, she moved to Bangalore, India, working as an ethnographer for a startup that helped India’s informal working sector find jobs. She went on to work for TED Talks, Forbes Magazine, and several other media companies before returning to her calling in women’s health in 2015. Prior to making the Yale School of Nursing her home, Rachel worked as a full spectrum doula and midwife’s assistant in New York City, providing women and families with support through pregnancy, loss, birth and postpartum. She is currently in her GEPN year and will graduate as a Certified Nurse Midwife and Women’s Health NP in 2020.
Read the full text of her essay here.
Mariah Baril-Dore
Mariah Baril-Dore is somebody who thinks talk is cheap. In a conversation about something important, she would say “show me” instead of “tell me about it”. Her writing is her way of showing you some of the most intimate and raw moments we humans can experience. She believes in caring for people’s souls as much as she does in caring for their bodies. She believes that health is an activity, and that care is both a condition and consequence of that. Mariah is currently a GEPN at YSN, and the truth of her dad’s words are driven home daily; “you can’t become yourself by yourself”. She is humbled by everything she has been shown and honored to be a part of this community.
Read the full text of her essay here.