About
Constance Studer is a retired registered nurse and writer of poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction. She worked many years in Intensive Care-Coronary Care and as a hospital supervisor. She received a diploma from the Toledo Hospital School of Nursing, a BA in English Literature from Illinois College and a MA in English Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has published two books: Prayer To A Purple God, Mellen Poetry Press, 1996, 2004 and Body Language: First Of All Do No Harm, Purdue University Press, 2009. Her collection of stories, Queen Of The Sugarhouse, will be released in June, 2021 by Atmosphere Press.
Her poetry has appeared in Cumberland Poetry Review, Carquinez Poetry Review, Eclipse, The Minnesota Review, We Speak For Peace, anthology, KIT, Sing Heavenly Muse!, Zone 3, Birmingham Poetry Review, Kaleidoscope, Prairie Smoke: The Pueblo Poetry Project 1979-1989, anthology, University of Southern Colorado Press, The Eleventh Muse, Calapooya Collage, High Plains Literary Review, Cream City Review, Newsletter Inago, ( 7 poems), Earth's Daughters, Mediphors: A Literary Journal for the Health Professionals, Embers, Wingbone: Poetry from Colorado, anthology, Sudden Jungle Press, The Devil's Millhopper, The Connecticut Writer, The Bloomsbury Review, Toward Solomon's Mountain: The Experience of Disability in Poetry, Temple University Press, The Sun, Embers, Hyperion: Black Sun, New Moon, anthology, Carolina Wren Press, Gumbo, Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose by Nurses, anthology, University of Iowa Press, and The Poetry of Nursing, anthology, Kent State University Press.
Her short stories have appeared in Phoenix, Crucible, Georgia State University Review, Thin Air Magazine, Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose by Nurses, anthology, University of Iowa Press, Westview: A Journal of Western Oklahoma and Ascent.
Her essays have appeared in South Dakota Review, SLAB: Sound and Literary Art Book, The Poetry of Nursing, anthology, Kent State University Press, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, The Mochila Review, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, American Journal of Nursing and Kaleidoscope: International Magazine of Literature, Fine Arts and Disability.
She has enjoyed writer's residencies at Hedgebrook, the Ucross Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Women's Institute, Denver. She has received grants from the Neodata Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Assembly of Boulder and the Katherine Sharp Rachlis Memorial Grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, New York. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize in poetry.
Featured Work
QUEEN OF THE SUGARHOUSE
Constance Studer's collection of stories brings to life strongly drawn characters dealing with challenging circumstances. A registered nurse working in ICU struggles to do the right thing after she makes a mistake. A homeless Desert Storm veteran grieves for his loss of health as well as for his father. Two women test their life-long friendship while one of them undergoes a facelift. An ER doctor's life is forever changed during one twenty-four hour shift. A writer, committed to a psychiatric hospital after an accident, uses her writing to heal. A novice nurse learns her job while taking care of an elderly man who has suffered a stroke. A waitress struggles with caring for her younger brother, who has muscular dystrophy. A daughter reluctantly returns home to nurse her mother on the Ohio farm where their livelihood was making maple sugar.
"Every person has a story," Carl Jung observed. "Derangement happens when the story is denied. To heal, the patient needs to rediscover his story." Constance Studer's characters find healing in making pottery, taking photographs of objects not usually thought of as beautiful, in climbing mountains, in writing a novel. Healing is a process, a journey towards balance, connectedness, meaning and wholeness, rather than an outcome.
Other Works
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Body Language: First Of All Do No Harm, Purdue University Press.
2009
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Prayer To A Purple God, Mellen Poetry Press.
1996, 2004.
Awards and Recognition
- 1970 and 1971 - Mary Wade Seybold Prize in English/Writing, Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois. 1977 - The Ann Woodbury Hafen Prize, Poetry Society of Colorado. Academic years 1978-1979 and 1979-1980: Received Teaching Assistant Grants; taught two sections of Introduction to Creative Writing, University of Colorado, Boulder. 1986 - Finalist in the Nimrod Poetry Contest, Tulsa Council on the Arts and Humanities. 1986 - Winner of the Fall/Winter EMBERS POETRY CONTEST, Carolyn Stoloff, Judge; nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 1987 - Artist-in-Residence Associate at the Rocky Mountain Women's Institute, Denver, CO. 1990 - First place winner in Poetry West Contest, THE ELEVENTH MUSE CONTEST, Colorado Springs, CO; nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
