Writing about disability and chronic illness: a conversation between David Toms and Karen Havelin

Writing about disability and chronic illness: a conversation between David Toms and Karen Havelin

Blood is pumped from our hearts out and around the network of vessels that stretch for thousands of miles. Our blood flows, courses, from the chambers of the heart – the innermost rooms, private interior, secret portion. Perhaps, though, it makes more sense to think of our blood walking through our bodies across those thousands of miles. Blood is pumped from the heart around the body at a speed of between three and four miles per hour. The average person walks at the same pace. Blood and feet synchronized as we walk streets, paths, trails, first steps to last.

In his book Pacemaker, acclaimed poet David Toms confronts what it means to live life while always walking in tandem with a rare heart condition.

Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) Awareness Week is held each year from Feb. 7-14 and this year to mark the occasion Prismatic Pages will host a conversation between local authors David Toms and Karen Havelin.

When: 11 February, 17.15-18.15

Where: Prismatic Pages, Rathkes gate 7b

Karen's novel Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is a life told in reverse and a subversion of what we expect from stories of illness. Having been diagnosed with endometriosis in her twenties, we follow Laura Fjellstad in her struggle to live a normal life across New York, Paris and Oslo, fueled by her belief that to survive her chronic illness she must be completely self-reliant.

David and Karen will discuss writing about illness and disability, their craft, and how they approach the topics in their respective books from both a memoir and fictional perspective.

This event is free but please register.

David Toms is an Irish writer living in Norway. He is the author of among others, Soma | Sema (2011), dikt / actions osl / ondon with Maren Nygård (2017), Northly (2019) and Pacemaker (2022). Awarded Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary Awards in 2021 and 2023, he was a Maddock Fellow at Marsh's Library, Dublin in 2024. He is a member of Den norske Forfatterforening. His most recent writing has appeared in Winter Papers, Enclave Review, aswirl, Banshee and Magma Poetry.

Karen Havelin is a writer and translator from Bergen, Norway. Educated at the University of Bergen, University of Paris Sorbonne and Columbia University, her work has been published both in Norwegian and in English. Her first novel, Please Read This Leaflet Carefully was published simultaneously in the US, the UK and Norway in spring 2019, and was shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize.