LIGHT seeks submissions in response to the question: 

How might we reimagine healing and transformation with cancer through art, letters, stories, and poetry?

Maybe it’s you who has had cancer and are now in remission. Maybe it’s your father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or friend who has cancer and are living with it or has had cancer and has passed with it. Maybe it’s you (or someone you know) who never took a simple test, like a pap smear, and you’ve discovered it when it’s already too late. Maybe you are barely living with it; maybe you’re dying with it. Maybe you are the one coping with cancer, or maybe you are coping as a loved one or a friend, even a caregiver, of someone who has cancer.Creativity, like mediums such as poetry, art, letters, and stories, can be used to reimagine, transform, and process one’s experience with cancer. It can be used to fuse the personal and the public, to ask unsettling questions that provoke thoughts or force us to dream. When a member of our team lost a family member to cervical cancer, she turned to poetry and the Cancer Journal from the Late Audre Lorde for healing and transformation. Audre Lorde described her experience with coping with cancer as an opportunity to transform silence into language and action. The poet Lucille Clifton also described cancer as the dreaded word that leaves you staring at life with your own living eyes.

But what do you call it? How might you reimagine healing and transformation from an experience with cancer?

Shed light on your journey. We are calling on the fluidity of your imaginations and potency of your truth, from your poetic vision to any attempts at social justice, from the tender trees planted in gardens in memory of lives lost to the single-breath pieces that help all of us to inhale and exhale through any experience with cancer. Through your art, letter, story, or poem, those walking a similar path or in similar shoes can know they are not alone and begin the process of healing and transformation.

Note: At this time, submissions will only be accepted if written in English. Submissions should not have been previously published and should be properly formatted with little to no grammatical errors. Submissions will be accepted via Submittable. Please do not include any identifying information in your uploaded file.

If you have questions about this contest or how/if your piece fits into our guidelines and answers the open call question, please view our “frequently asked questions” section on our website or contact us via email at info@light4ph.org. Disclaimer: Entries not related to reimagining healing and transformation with cancer will be disqualified.

Before submitting to LIGHT, you will be asked to acknowledge and agree to the following:

• I assure that the work I am submitting to LIGHT is original work, owned by myself, OR I have partial ownership of the work and am submitting the work with consent from the person or people who also have ownership of the work. I, or we (if submitting with others), take full responsibility of its veracity falling to myself or my team as authors.
• I attest that the work I am submitting has not been previously published elsewhere (an exception is if it has been published on a personal website, blog, Spotify, etc.).
• I give LIGHT the right to edit, duplicate, and publish my creative work in their open-access literary journal and disseminate this work for promotional reasons via any type of media to a broader audience.
• I understand LIGHT reserves the right to refuse to publish any work that may be deemed harmful, slanderous, or malicious, etc., regardless of how well written it is.
• I acknowledge that I will not receive any compensation for LIGHT's use of my creative work, except that of a monetary prize if my creative work places as a top submission (see LIGHT’s open call prizes for more details).
• I understand that I cannot make a claim as a violation against usage rights against LIGHT related to the use of my creative work. If submitting concurrently, I will withdraw my submission if it is accepted elsewhere.
• I understand that I own all rights to my submission post-publication, and I will credit LIGHT as the original publisher if I choose to publish my creative work elsewhere.
• If my submission is selected to be included in the LIGHT journal, I recognize my name will be published with it.
• If submitting as part of a group, I agree that all group members consent to these terms

Confidentiality Kindly note the privacy of individuals should be protected. Public health practitioners who write about individuals and communities should alter identifying details and characteristics.

References:
1. Lorde, A. (2020). The cancer journals. Penguin.

2. Clifton, L., & Girmay A. (2020). How to Carry Water. BOA Editions Limited.