Amy Haddad, PhD, professor emerita in the Creighton School of Pharmacy and Health Professions at Creighton University, will speak at a webinar hosted by the McGoogan Library of Health Sciences from noon-1 p.m. on Oct. 21 at the Sorrell Center, MSC 2018 or via Zoom.
To attend the lecture via Zoom, please register here.
For creative writers who are also health care professionals and patients, rendering authenticity in their writing is complicated, especially as the subjects they write about are often drawn from personal and clinical experience. Dr. Haddad, author of the poetry collection “The Most Potent Weapons, is a nurse, patient and writer. She will discuss the ways her creative work gives voice to these roles, as well as how experiences with illness shape content, insights and setting. Writing can be a way to work through the complicated feelings a person undergoes from traumatic events like a cancer diagnosis.
She will read examples of her poetry and examine how an observation or experience makes it to the page in the form of poetry. Participants will have an opportunity to reflect on and write poetry.
Enter a drawing to receive a signed copy of the “The Most Potent Weapon.” Copies also will be available for purchase and signing by Dr. Haddad at the in-person event. Cost is $10.
Dr. Haddad is the 2019 recipient of the Annals of Internal Medicine poetry prize for “Families Like This” for the best poem published in the journal. She won third place in the 2019 Kalanithi Writing Awards from Stanford University for her poem “Dark Rides.” Her chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens,” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in early 2022. “An Otherwise Healthy Woman” was awarded twice in the 2022 AJN Book of the Year Awards: first place in the Creative Works Category and second place in the Professional Issues Category. In 2025, her second chapbook, “The Most Potent Weapon,” was published by Bottlecap Press.