In Impact, 21 women writers consider the effects of concussion on their personal and professional lives. The anthology bears witness to the painstaking work that goes into redefining identity and regaining creative practice after a traumatic event. By sharing their complex and sometimes incomplete healing journeys, these women convey the magnitude of a disability which is often doubted, overlooked, and trivialized, in part because of its invisibility. Impact offers compassion and empathy to all readers and families healing from concussion and other types of trauma.

Contributors: Adèle Barclay, Jane Cawthorne, Tracy Wai de Boer, Stephanie Everett, Mary-Jo Fetterly, Rayanne Haines, Jane Harris, Kyla Jamieson, Alexis Kienlen, Claire Lacey, E. D. Morin, Julia Nunes, Shelley Pacholok, Chiedza Pasipanodya, Judy Rebick, Julie Sedivy, Dianah Smith, Carrie Snyder, Kinnie Starr, Amy Stuart, Anna Swanson

Available on many channels, including Libro.fm.

E. D. (Elaine) Morin is a writer, editor, and creative writing instructor. Her fiction, poetry, interviews, book reviews, and articles have appeared in such publications as The Antigonish Review, Alberta Views, The Wascana Review and Alternatives Journal, and her work has been produced for broadcast on CBC Radio. A winner of the Brenda Strathern Late Bloomers Writing Prize, awarded at 2007 Calgary International Wordfest, Elaine is a co-director of the annual Calgary reading series, Writing in the Works.

E.D. Morin's profile page

Shorter:

Jane Cawthorne is a writer, editor, and feminist activist. Her first novel, Patterson House, is forthcoming with Inanna Publications in 2022. She recently published the anthology, Writing Menopause, with Elaine Morin in 2017. Jane writes about women on the brink of transformation.

Longer:

Jane Cawthorne is a writer, editor, and feminist activist. Her first novel, Patterson House, is forthcoming with Inanna Publications in 2022. She recently published the anthology, Writing Menopause, with Elaine Morin in 2017. She has written about her personal experience with illness before in “The Cure for a Cancer Cliché,” which was the first runner-up in the PRISM International Creative Non Fiction Contest in 2007, and again in her essay, “Something As Big As A Mountain,” published in PRISM in 2012 and listed as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2013.

She has an MFA in Creative Writing and writes about women on the brink of transformation.

Jane Cawthorne's profile page

• Short-listed, Book Cover Design | Alberta Book Publishing Awards, Book Publishers Association of Alberta
• Winner, Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year | Alberta Book Publishing Awards, Book Publishers Association of Alberta

"The 21 contributors here are strong, capable, accomplished.... Yet their ongoing success was jeopardized by a concussion, a.k.a. TBI (traumatic brain injury). Through this anthology, we step into the realm of the contributors' confusion and turmoil. The journey is at once astonishing, fascinating, troubling and inspiring.... Impact is one of the best anthologies I've ever read. It is not a quick read. Much pain and beauty are in its pages." Doreen Vanderstoop, Alberta Views Magazine, June 2022

"The personal essays and poetry collected in this anthology edited by activist writers Morin and Cawthorne explore how concussions and traumatic brain injuries (TBI) impact women, and in particular, how suffering a concussion and TBI has affected the individual lives of the various contributing authors.... The anthology is divided into five sections, each bookended with poetry, and includes essays on, e.g., accepting the effects of injury, the challenges of healing, the life changes wrought by concussion, and the struggle for recovery of the creative process.... The essays, written by a diverse group of women writers, were selected with the aim of helping women who have suffered from concussion realize that they are not alone." C. A. Nadon, CHOICE Magazine

Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers.

"Recommended reading.... we find it compelling and profoundly accurate." Concussion Alliance newsletter, March 2, 2022

Impact: Women Writing After Concussion is an anthology containing the stories of 21 women writers reflecting on how their personal and professional lives have changed following experience with concussion.

Concussion Alliance, March 2, 2022