About This Journal
About Voices of Care
Voices of Care: Reflections from Nursing and the Health Professions is a community anthology celebrating the creative voices of those who provide care across Northern California.
Healthcare is shaped by stories: the stories we tell about illness and healing, the stories we carry from encounters with one another, and the stories that help us make meaning from experiences that can be difficult to put into words. Voices of Care creates a space for nurses and other health professionals to explore these experiences through poetry, essays, stories, visual art, photography, and other creative forms.
We understand the work of care broadly. We welcome submissions from nurses, healthcare interpreters, social workers, therapists, physicians, community health workers, counselors, technicians, educators, students and trainees, retired health professionals, and others whose work contributes to health, healing, and care.
Many Languages, Many Voices
We welcome multilingual submissions and work written in languages other than English. Contributors may submit work in English, Spanish, another language, or in more than one language. Translation is welcome but is not required for initial consideration.
We especially welcome submissions from healthcare interpreters and others whose work takes place across languages and cultures. Interpreters occupy a vital space within healthcare: listening closely, carrying meaning between people, navigating cultural and linguistic difference, and helping patients, families, and healthcare professionals understand one another. We hope Voices of Care can provide space for creative work arising from these experiences as well as from interpreters' lives beyond their professional roles.
Beyond the Clinical Story
Your submission does not need to be about healthcare. This anthology is meant to recognize healthcare professionals as people with lives, identities, histories, relationships, communities, questions, imaginations, and experiences that extend beyond their professional roles.
We welcome work that is reflective, playful, searching, experimental, joyful, difficult, humorous, unexpected, or hard to categorize. You do not need to consider yourself a writer or artist, and you do not need to have been published before.
A Community in Conversation
Each edition of Voices of Care creates a record of the people, experiences, languages, and forms of care that shape our region at a particular moment. By bringing these voices together, we hope to deepen understanding of the human dimensions of healthcare and strengthen connections among those who provide care and the communities they serve.