Tereza Crvenkovic Writer
I tell flesh and blood stories
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed…it becomes strange that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.
-Virginia Woolf
I am a Sydney-based literary writer, 2 x kidney transplant recipient (1992; 2017) and stroke survivor (2009). My creative work explores aspects of my lived experience with chronic kidney disease, chronic pain, organ transplantation, stroke and disability.
Transplantation, chronic illness and disability narratives are big. In fact, they’re epic. They have their own life, their own rhythm, demand to be told, as much as they demand to be heard.
Yet they are next to impossible to tell.
Those of us living with chronic illness and disability know that there are unspoken rules and boundaries around how much of our lived experience can be revealed in our ableist cultural world.
My creative storytelling offers an alternative: it brings the implicit, silent, bodily experience of chronic illness, organ transplantation and disability out of the closet into the light.
My flesh and blood narratives shine a light on the invisible human realities surrounding organ transplantation, chronic illness, pain, stroke and disability.
Themes
The highly variable, sometimes turbulent emotional landscape of living with another person’s organ/s; the ongoing battles involved in living with severe chronic pain; chronic illness caused by immunosuppression (organ transplantation medication).
Medical mishaps; life-affirming and life-negating dialogues with medical professionals, friends and strangers; body image; feelings of alienation, of being an outsider; scars; disability; ableism; vulnerability; courage; determination; hope; resilience; triumph; gratitude; love.
Other Stuff
I’m a member of the Creative Hybrids Lab, an international collective of artists and writers who critically engage with their lived experience of transplantation and disability.
My creative work has appeared in Hektoen International, Spineless Wonders, Imprint, The Focusing Folio and Australian Yoga Life.
I hold an MPhil in Performance studies (USYD), an MA in Theatre Studies (UNSW), a BA (Hons) in English Literature (USYD) and a GradDip in Creative Writing (USYD). I am also a Certified Focusing Trainer (The International Focusing Institute, New York).