Chelsee Wilson was diagnosed at 29 with Stage IIIa, Triple Positive breast cancer. She is now 5+ years out from diagnosis. Chelsee lives in Oklahoma with her husband and loves baking, crocheting, reading and writing.
Chelsee Wilson was diagnosed at 29 with Stage IIIa, Triple Positive breast cancer. In this episode she reads her essay “The Power of No” from the 2022 “Identity & Aftermath” issue of Wildfire Magazine. Her story is about one woman’s quest to break cycles.
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Sondra Price was diagnosed at 20, 24, and 28 with malignant phyllodes tumors that led to two lumpectomies, a bilateral mastectomy, implant reconstruction, and an explant to flat closure. She found her way to flat closure on her chest the long way around, and because of that, she’s now a fierce advocate for others to truly know what their breast surgery options are. Because the truth is, if you don’t know your options, you don’t really have any. In this episode, Sondra reads her piece “The Road to Advocacy” from Wildfire Magazine’s 2020 “Changemakers” issue.
Emily Voreas was diagnosed at 33 with Stage IIIb breast cancer, and also carries the BRCA2 gene. Emily has a Masters in Elementary Education and currently works as a reading interventionist. In this episode she reads her poem “Where does the story end?” from the 2024 “Family” issue of Wildfire Journal. Her poem is about four generations of women and cancer. April and Emily will discuss family cancer legacies, fertility, aesthetic flat closure, and the evolving advocacy in each generation of breast cancer.
In this episode you are going to hear a collection of short pieces we are dubbing “Flash Memoir” from our archives. These are little gems we’ve published in Wildfire Magazine, read for you by April Stearns. We have nine years of published stories in our archives that are just too good not to share. In the past we used to do a call for submissions for short-form stories with a very specific prompt in mind. We would get back some very impactful bite-size vignettes – not long enough to be a full essay. This collection of dense & sparkling flash memoir pieces comes from our 2020 “Survivorship” issue of Wildfire Magazine. The writing prompt was “Dear Pre-Cancer Me” with pieces written by Mackenzie Rockcastle, Tiffany Dyba, Kristie Vinopoll and Julie Gauvin.
