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Six weeks after Kathy Shaidle quit her day job to write poetry full-time, she learned she had lupus, a chronic disease with debilitating, and sometimes fatal, side effects. Her first reaction was to think what a bad joke it all was, but she says her second reaction was one familiar to many freelance writers: "Wow, I can write about this one day."
Seven years later, Shaidle has parlayed what could have been a paralyzing setback into a burgeoning writing career. This fall, Northstone Publishing released a collection of her essays, and in October, she was nominated for a Governor General's Award for Lobotomy Magnificat, a 1997 collection from Oberon Press. And she's also working full-time again -- as marketing co-ordinator at Novalis in Toronto, where she's a familiar face in the religious publishing community.
The essay collection, God Rides a Yamaha, recounts the strange story of what happened shortly after she left New Catholic Times, where she worked as production manager, to make a go of it as a full-time writer with the support of a few arts grants. After a few weeks of feeling unusually tired, she woke up one morning with a bright pink rash on her nose and cheeks. Her doctor announced that she had the most distinctive sign of lupus.
When her colleagues at New Catholic Times heard the news, they asked her to contribute a couple of columns about life as a twenty-something with a serious illness. Shaidle did, and the response from readers was enthusiastic, so she kept on writing, and soon incurable diseases became her de facto beat. She wrote the column for four years...