In late March, Southern fan Laura Haywood-Cory suffered a spontaneous coronary artery dissection, was hospitalized, and had six stents implanted “not to open up blockages, but to repair my shredded right coronary artery.” She is one of the founding members of Trino*coN, and does publicity work for Baen Books.
Now she writes:
Since my heart attack and angioplasty/stents, I’ve been trying to think of a fannish way to get the word out about heart disease, which as I’m sure my readers are aware, is the #1 killer of men and women both here in the US.
I volunteered at a health expo the other weekend, at the WomenHeart booth, handing out brochures and information, and on my way to work the other morning, a lightbulb went off. Fans don’t want to read brochures, we want to read fanzines (duh).
So I figured I’d try to solicit as many stories from as many fannish heart patients as I could, put them all together in a one-shot, and distribute it far and wide. Maybe even make a nifty, limited-edition button to give to all the contributors.
The last page would be an “In Memoriam” page, or as one my favorite TV shows, Babylon 5 says, “To absent friends, in memory still bright…” with a list of fans who’ve passed on from heart disease/heart attacks/etc.
Toward that end, this is a call for contributions for my one-shot fanzine, to be called A Change of Heart.
What kinds of submissions am I talking about here? Well, statistics are dry and boring. I could throw a bunch of numbers at you, tell you that many more men than women get referred for cardiac rehab, for example, but it’s more entertaining to craft an anecdote about being the only person in my cohort dealing with PMS.
Essays, poems, letters of comment, and artwork from fans who’ve had heart-related illness and/or surgery are welcome. If you yourself aren’t the heart patient, but an immediate family member is/was, I’d also be glad to hear from you.
Emailed submissions are strongly preferred; please send to laurahcory at yahoo dot com—but if you know someone who doesn’t do email, ping me and I’ll send you my snail-addy to pass along. And I need names for the “In Memoriam” page.
Deadline for submissions is 24 July. That gives me a couple of weeks to pull it together and have it ready to send some copies up to WorldCon and other late summer cons.
Permission granted to forward this to other fannish places.
Thanks and best wishes,
Laura Haywood-Cory