PAHS is currently seeking personal health narratives. Specifically, we seek high-quality, unpublished nonfiction, first-person stories and/or nonfiction poetry by patients, caregivers, all health and mental health professionals, students and anyone else who wants to share experiences of giving or receiving health care. We are grateful for each and every submission and appreciate not only the time it takes to write your stories, but also the vulnerability and courage it takes to raise your voice.

If you have attended our forums, you have an idea of the principles we value in storytelling, including clear language, matter-of-factness and restraint in sharing emotionally charged material, and specific, concrete imagery that engages the senses and brings a story to life by incorporating details of the external, physical world that we all share. Nonetheless, even if you have never attended a PAHS forum, we want to hear your health story and strongly encourage you to share it.

By submitting your story to PAHS, you grant us permission to share your writing on our website. We may also wish to publish your work in a future anthology and/or other future publications or promotional materials, but would seek your specific, separate permission before doing so.

1. Are you a Friend of PAHS? If not, please subscribe to our newsletter! Just scroll down to the bottom of this page to sign up--it’s easy!

2. Is this an original piece of work, created by you? We consider only original works.

3. Does your story or poem arise from your own experience? We want stories and poems that arise from situations you have experienced personally.

4. Does your piece describe a patient? PAHS is committed to protecting a patient’s right to privacy. Ideally, you will obtain written permission from any patient you write about; as an alternative, you must change his or her name and omit or alter other identifying characteristics.

5. Is your story under 1500 words? While we will consider longer work, shorter stories (and narrative poems) work best for our project. Therefore, we recommend that you work to tighten your story by removing unnecessary words and details in order to distill it to fewer than 1500 words (usually, tightening up a story makes it much more powerful, too!).

6. How should you submit your story? Easy! Just email it in a Word document or pasted into the body of an email (no PDFs, please) in 12 pt Times New Roman font, double spaced, to steward@umn.edu

7. Questions? We're happy to answer what we can. Just send an email to steward@umn.edu