Nursing students currently enrolled in any UNMC College of Nursing program are invited to submit a story to the UNMC College of Nursing’s creative writing contest. The theme of this year’s contest is "Nurses Encounter Diversity."
Six $2,000 awards will go to the winners. The written submissions may be fiction or non-fiction, prose or poetry. Stories will be shared online, published in a booklet and considered for integration into curriculum. Submissions are accepted until Nov. 29 at 5 p.m. CDT on the college's creative writing project website.
The top 20 entries will be judged internally by UNMC faculty and staff. The second round will then be judged by community members and several published authors. These authors include Brad Poulin, a published poet from Kearney; Bud Shaw, author of "Last Night in the OR: A Transplant Surgeon's Odyssey"; and several nurse authors including Elizabeth Norman, who wrote "We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped on Bataan".
From the 61 submissions last year, the college’s creative writing project presented six awards of $2,000 and seven honorable mention awards of $400. A compilation of these stories will be published this fall. Recordings of the winners are located on the creative writing project website.
Last year, UNMC College of Nursing faculty members Mary C. Petersen and Mark Darby received a two-year UNMC faculty diversity grant that funds the awards. Their work has been highlighted in the American Journal of Nursing.
"This grant is showing the power of storytelling in education of health professionals," Darby said. "Telling the story of nursing promotes reflection on difficult experiences and helps nursing students improve their ability to care for diverse populations."
Darby and Petersen hope to secure long-term funding once the grant funding ends.
For more information, visit the creative writing project site.