I am a writer and cartoonist.
From 2009 to 2011, I wrote for the Woman Up column on Politics Daily and co-originated the political cartoon column Chaos Theory with my husband Robert Trussell. We’ve also done cartoons on media for the Poynter Institute, as well as cancer cartoons. See a sampling of our work at Malice Palace.
In 2002, one year after a diagnosis of advanced ovarian cancer, my essay Everything Changed appeared in The Kansas City Star. I assumed my bleak survival statistics would make emotional adjustment unnecessary. But my remission held and after a long dry spell, I began to write again. In 2006 my essay Remember Me as a Writer, Not a Survivor on my struggle to regain ground lost to the trauma of illness was published in Newsweek.
In 2009 I took a month-long rail trip West with an old friend. The resulting story was published in The Kansas City Star Sunday magazine: Trip of a Lifetime: Cancer Diagnosis Brings Two Friends Together.
My fiction and poetry have appeared in North American Review, Poetry, Chicago Review and other journals. My short story “Fishbone,” first published in TriQuarterly in 1989, has been anthologized and performed as a play in Seattle and as a monologue in Dallas. In 2008 Helicon Nine published my collection of poetry, What’s Right About What’s Wrong. The following year the book won the Thorpe Menn Award and was named one of the best books of the year by Slate.com:
“Each [poem] is a compact little rock of Texas Gothic, thrown hard. Think Flannery O’Connor in verse, with less God and more rodeo,” wrote reviewer Melinda Henneberger.
Even before Trussell was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2001 — she got the call telling her to report for surgery while watching the Twin Towers fall — her work, as she says, “tended toward death, death, pet death, sex, love, death.”
But fierce or yearning, I love these ghosts — like Miss Candace Mayes, who surrendered her place in the last lifeboat off the Titanic to a mother who died years later of guilt, in an asylum where “Her hands would climb the trellis. Her feet were never still.” Of a daughter never conceived who calls, “[G]ive me your darkest winter, it will be spring to me.” And of a poet read posthumously, who can’t help asking: Who are you? What do you do? Tell me, is the sun out?
What’s Right About What’s Wrong is available from Helicon Nine and bookstores.
A fifth-generation Texan, I now live in Kansas City.
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EMAIL at donnatrussell at gmail dot com (I read everything, but I’m awful at writing back; I apologize in advance)
CIRCLE on Google+
FOLLOW on Twitter @donnatrussell
CHECK OUT YouTube channel at TwilightZin
VIEW flickr photostream at quixotic.chick
SAY HOWDY on Facebook at Donna Trussell
Site design by WordPress & Jake Trussell
This page has the following sub pages.
Hey Donna, I was trying to track you down and found this website. Beautiful! You know, things happen, people get lost in daily trivialities, and then one day they wake up and realize too much time has passed. I hope this little note finds you and we reconnect–if not, I’ll keep trying.
Hi Donna
Just wanted to say hello from the Midwest- from one clear cell ovarian cancer survivor to another! (Yes, it is quite lonely out there, but I’ve met 3 of us in person.)
I’ve read your posts on ACOR and your essay published in Newsweek. Now I look forward to reading your poems.
When I get my website up again, I’ll let you know. It has been on my to do list. Your blog is inspiring.
BTW: I want to be remembered as a photographer.
Hi Julianne. Thank you for your kind words. Do let me know when your photos are up.
WordPress has software for photo-bloggers. It’s called Cutline. If you click on Tabbie’s Garden on my bookmarks to the right, you can see an example. The format is nice and simple.
Re remembered as a writer: And irony of ironies, if I’m remembered at all, it will probably be as a “cancer writer.” Ha!
But I’m just thrilled to be alive. To the uninitiated: Clear cell is supposedly the most aggressive and most chemo-resistant of the roughly 35 subtypes of ovarian cancer.
For the record, my oncologist never did agree with the experts on clear cell’s mean reputation. And today I am seven years out and, as far as we know, cancer free.
Dear Donna Trussel
We have read your story Fishbone in our english classes and we would like to know where you got your inspiration from?
also we thought about why Wanda gives her baby such special names? (Fishbone, Logarithm and so)
We have talked about for instance which “images”, symbols you have used and what they mean.
At last we want you to know that it was a good and interesting text with a good message.
We hope the hear from you
Friendly regards
- Mie, Kristine, Luna and Carina
Hello students! Thank you for writing to me. See my blog post Looking for America:
http://donnatrussell.com/2008/11/07/looking-for-america/
A great resource for a young writer with cancer- thank you!
why u iterested in Iran?
Re Iran: My heart goes out to the protesters. They want good government, and good relations with the rest of the world, and many are willing to die for that cause. What’s not to like?
Donna,
I was wondering if you happen to be a DES daughter. I am, and the thought of getting clear cell cancer scares me. I am also a poet. I wish you all the best.
Diane
Hi Diane. We’re not certain what my mother took for 5 months to prevent miscarriage. Her doctor later claimed it was progesterone, but as early as age 21, my gynecologist said it couldn’t have been progesterone, that only DES would cause the irregularities they saw.
Although it’s true that clear cell has a horrible reputation, my oncologist does not agree. She thinks clear cell is no worse or better than any other ovarian cancer cell type.
I have a good friend who is a 10-year survivor of clear cell, and she’s been in remission all that time. I’m 8 years out from my diagnosis, and I too have been in remission the entire time.
Besides, not everyone exposed to DES gets cancer. Cancer is a complex disease, with many causes interacting. That’s why we see trim, fit non-smokers get cancer, and twinkie-loving, booze-swilling, 3-packs-a-day folks live into their 80s.
We don’t yet understand cancer very well, which is one reason we we see so many superstitions and quackery surrounding this disease.
Donna,
From my understandng, if your mother took anything (or received injections) to prevent a miscarriage, then you can be just about positive it was DES. That’s what my mother had (injections to prevent pregnancy loss). Even if it was something with a different name, it had the same kind of chemical effects on the fetus.
Cancer runs really bad on my dad’s side of the family. I have a first cousin who died of ovarian cancer. Both of her sisters needed hysterectomys because of cancer. And none of them were DES daughters. We just have lots of cancer on that side of the family. Someone even had sinus cancer.
One of my doctors described my uterus as a tickng time bomb. I wish had the guts to have my stuff taken out even though that’s tough too. Ignore my spelling as I haven’t been to bed yet. Well, enough about me. I think t’s due to the DES because that type of cancer is rare, isn’t it?
Keep geeting better!
Diane
How old are you, Diane?
Hey Donna,
I’m 47. I sent you an e-mail a couple of days ago. If you didn’t get it, I can send it again.
Diane