Alumni Profiles: English
Super Sick: Making Peace with Chronic Illness – English alumna Allison Alexander launches first book
Having battled chronic illness all her life, Alexander wants to see herself in her heroes. Her new book Super Sick chronicles her search for sick characters in pop culture, and the personal impact of that quest.
"Superheroes aren't sick. They don't lie in bed all day because they're in too much pain to get up. They don't face the challenges of the chronically ill, which include socially inappropriate topics like mental illness, sex, and diarrhea. The latter, of course, would be exponentially worse in a spandex suit."
Continue Reading
In God’s Country: Alumna finds joy and purpose teaching in Canada’s far north
Gjoa Haven is situated on William Island, Nunavut, a little over 2,000 kilometres north of Winnipeg. As the crow flies, it's about as far from here to Vancouver. But the Mercator effect is truer to life in Canada than ninth-grade social studies would have us believe: in significance if not in substance, distances expand toward the Pole. While the realities of life up north can be harsh, for Katrina Brooks, a 2015 alumna of CMU's Bachelor of Arts in English now teaching at Gjoa Haven's Qiqirtaq Ilihakvik High School, this expansion of space and consciousness is a taste of what it feels like to be in God's country.
Continue Reading
Listening an act of service for alumna
As a journalist, Katie Doke Sawatzky (CMU '10) does a lot of listening. For her, it's an act of service.
"At the end of the day, you're just talking to people and listening, which I think is why I wanted to pursue journalism in the first place," she says. "I was interested in pursuing this line of work because you come at it from a stance of compassion."
Continue Reading
Print This Article