Five writers – Nasim Marie Jafry, Laura Elliott, Henry Anderson, JP Seabright and Louise Kenward – discuss what it’s like to write with M.E. and how chronic illness has forced them to discover new modes of understanding, new forms of expression, new realms of imagination (as edited by author Katy Wimhurst).
Telling stories may be a basic human need, but the kind of stories we tell and how we tell them reveals something about who we are and how we experience the world. This may be especially true if our experience involves a body that has gone chronically wrong. Inhabiting the body can be a strange, unsettling thing. Chronic illness forces us to question things, to discover new modes of understanding and expression, although this isn’t to romanticize sickness or see it as ‘illuminating’. In this piece, five people who suffer from myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) – a neuro-immune disease sometimes called by the inadequate term ‘CFS’ – talk about how it has affected their development as writers and their writing practice. While each individual has their personal take – and I will let their voices speak for themselves – their words reveal common themes too. (Editor Katy Wimhurst, author of
Snapshots of the Apocalypse).
