A Healing Journey: Writing Together Through Breast Cancer is a book by, about, and for women who live with breast cancer, and for those who care about them. It is also for professionals in the healing arts who increasingly are looking to writing as a healing methodology. And it is for writers, teachers of writing, and workshop leaders who want to know how effectively to use writing as a healing practice with persons experiencing life-threatening illnesses.
Best known for her innovative work in expressive or therapeutic writing for those whose voices have been silenced by pain, loss or trauma, Dr. Sharon Bray has been leading expressive writing groups for cancer survivors for over a decade. Her two most recent books, When Words Heal: Writing Through Cancer (North Atlantic/Frog Books, 2006) and A Healing Journey: Writing Together through Breast Cancer (Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2004) document her work. She co-edited, with Pat Fobair, LCSW, an anthology of cancer patients' writing, Learning to Live Again, published by the Stanford School of Medicine in 2007.
Sharon grew up in Northern California, completed her B.A. and a year of graduate study at San Jose State University and earned her doctoral degree at the University of Toronto. She has also studied creative writing and literary fiction at Humber School for Writers in Toronto, completed a certificate in literary fiction at University of Washington ext. Writers' Program and studied transformative language arts at Goddard College.
In addition to her most recent books, she has authored a children's book, poetry, memoir and personal essays. Her work has appeared in anthologies, journals and magazines, and she is featured on the DVD, Writing Alone and With Others, the accompaniment to Pat Schneider's book by the same title.
Sharon currently teaches creative nonfiction for UCLA extension Writer's Program, leads groups for cancer survivors at Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto and Scripps Green Cancer Center in San Diego and also leads the Writers' Workshop at Stanford Medical School. Each summer, she teaches a week-long course on writing & healing at Berkeley's Pacific School of Religion.
She offers weekly writing prompts for cancer survivors and others at www.writingthroughcancer.wordpress.com. Her personal website is: www.sharonbray.net.
She is now completing a novel.
