The Body Alone: A Lyrical Articulation of Chronic Pain

The Body Alone is an inquiry into the experience, meaning, and articulation of pain. It is a personal hybrid account incorporating research, scholarship, and memoir to examine chronic pain through the multi-lens of medicine, theology, and philosophy. Broken bodies tell broken stories. Nina Lohman’s pain experience is portrayed through a cyclical narrative of primers, vocabulary lessons, prescription records, and hypothesized internal monologues--fractured not for the sake of experimentation but because the story itself demands it.

In both form and content, The Body Alone represents boundary-pressing work that subverts the traditional narrative by putting pressure on the medical, cultural, and political systems that impact women’s access to fair and equal healthcare. This is more than an illness narrative, it is a battle cry demanding change.

Nina Lohman is founder and publisher of Brink, a literary journal that champions hybrid and cross-genre works. She is Literary Programming Director for the Mission Creek Festival. A 2023 Iowa Artist Fellow, her writing has been supported by the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Iowa Arts Council. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.