Capillaries: The Journal of Narrative Medicine is a student-run project with the mission of providing the UW community of all backgrounds the opportunity to write and create works of art about their experiences with health and healing, in addition to reflecting on community/national/global health issues. We are expanding awareness of and participation in narrative medicine at UW, encouraging undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff –from all departments, not just in medicine –to share their stories with us. Since February 2018, we have worked towards reducing the stigma against discussing mental health, shame, disordered eating, suicide, sexual assault, and our most vulnerable and often silenced experiences. We have also sought to uplift the voices of populations marginalized by our fractured healthcare system by collaborating with the Center for Health Sciences Interprofessional Education, Research, and Practice (CHSIE), the UW School of Medicine’s Narrative Medicine Interest Group, and the Seattle-King County Clinic.
This is your place to share pieces of writing and art pertaining to narrative medicine. Regardless of your background, health is a fundamental human experience, and we wish to encourage all students to share their stories and ideas on health-related issues.
We accept a variety of written prose (e.g. stories, reflections, articles, essays), poetry, and artwork (e.g. hand-drawings, paintings, photography, graphic design, and comics). We also accept other modes of art such as dance or music and will work with you to determine the best way to share your piece with the community.
What we mean by “narrative medicine”:
~A place where science meets the arts
~A space to honor and discuss stories that may otherwise go unheard
~More importantly:This journal is very open-ended when it comes to stories and articles that are published. While some articles in the past have dealt with community health issues and medical experiences, the pieces do not have to be directly about “medical issues.” Narrative medicine has its roots in the healthcare field, but we’ve expanded its meaning to capture a greater wealth of stories and experiences. To us, narrative medicine is when the writer/artist steps back to reflect and introspect on certain moments in life –a moment that changed your perspective in some manner, a moment in which you learned something about yourself or came to terms with your identity, a time when you were faced with difficult circumstances but endured and grew and learned. In the past, we have published personal accounts of health experiences, experiences working/volunteering in a hospital, and academic articles on healthcare and the social determinants of health, and we definitely still welcome those narratives. But we’ve also published and will continue to welcome stories that grapple with climate change and the human interaction with nature, shifting relationships between family members, what it means to love and lose, and even reviews on books, articles, films, and music that made an impression upon your consciousness and perhaps helped you to see the world in a different light.
~A place where science meets the arts
~A space to honor and discuss stories that may otherwise go unheard
~More importantly:This journal is very open-ended when it comes to stories and articles that are published. While some articles in the past have dealt with community health issues and medical experiences, the pieces do not have to be directly about “medical issues.” Narrative medicine has its roots in the healthcare field, but we’ve expanded its meaning to capture a greater wealth of stories and experiences. To us, narrative medicine is when the writer/artist steps back to reflect and introspect on certain moments in life –a moment that changed your perspective in some manner, a moment in which you learned something about yourself or came to terms with your identity, a time when you were faced with difficult circumstances but endured and grew and learned. In the past, we have published personal accounts of health experiences, experiences working/volunteering in a hospital, and academic articles on healthcare and the social determinants of health, and we definitely still welcome those narratives. But we’ve also published and will continue to welcome stories that grapple with climate change and the human interaction with nature, shifting relationships between family members, what it means to love and lose, and even reviews on books, articles, films, and music that made an impression upon your consciousness and perhaps helped you to see the world in a different light.
In the end, narrative medicine is more of a process rather than a specific style of
writing and art. It includes prose (a reflection and or a work of creative fiction!), poetry, academic articles, photography, painting, or comics –and is a chance for you to sit back and unpack certain ideas, theories, and experiences that you’ve been wanting to do but haven’t had the chance to. Through this process, we hope it allows you to achieve some sense of order and structure to lingering thoughts/past experiences, and we hope it empowers you to share and discuss these ideas with the community around you.
SUBMISSIONS DUE SUN, Feb. 2 by 11:59PM
Please abide by the submission guidelines listed on our website: https://capillariesjournal.com/journal-submissions.html
Feel free to contact us at cjuw@uw.edu if you have any questions.
For previous editions of our journal and submission guidelines, check out our website:
https://www.capillariesjournal.com/
