Oncological Sciences Center

Creating Hope Community Project

Share your cancer story

How has cancer affected you, your family, and friends? What do you want others to know?

In anticipation of a visit this fall by Joyce Brabner, co-author of Our Cancer Year, and illustrator Frank Stack, we are inviting the greater Lafayette to share their cancer story with us. Over the next few months, volunteer editors and artists will be compiling the stories into a graphic novel, Lafayette – Our Cancer Year which will be unveiled during Brabner and Stack's visit November 4 for our annual Cancer Culture and Community program. The book will be dedicated to Brabner's husband Harvey Pekar - who died July 12 at age 70 - along with everyone who has fought against cancer.

View the stories have have been submitted for this project»

About Cancer Culture and Community

The Oncological Sciences Center in Discovery Park in partnership with the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University created the Cancer Culture and Community (CCC) Program in 2007 to explore the human response to cancer as expressed through the arts and literature.  Each November, nationally renowned writers visit the West Lafayette campus, interacting with Purdue students and faculty as well as members of the greater Lafayette community.

The colloquium was inspired by the powerful exhibition hosted by the Lafayette Art Museum of paintings by Hollis Sigler, which chronicled her battle and ultimate death from breast cancer. Lectures surrounding the exhibit demonstrated the powerful influence art and literature can have on how people cope with cancer.

For more information, please contact Kris Swank at kswank@purdue.edu or (765) 494-4674.

We'd like to thank you for helping to make this program a community success.