Big News

Calgary Writer Wins Prestigious National Award

Calgary writer Deborah Nicholson has won Canadian Pain Society’s inaugural Pain Awareness Award (2009). Ms Nicholson is the author of the Kate Carpenter Mysteries series (Severn House).

Ms. Nicholson, a medical transcriptionist with Alberta Health Services Calgary Chronic Pain Centre (the largest pain centre in Canada), spent a year interviewing caregivers, patients and their families in order to learn about chronic pain and its impact. The play, The Pain Diaries, took another year to complete. In this two act play Nicholson uses humour to tackle the very difficult and misunderstood subject of chronic pain.

She says “I couldn’t stop thinking about these people and their stories, they haunted me. I had to find a way to bring this to the public, so we could start to understand how lives are altered by this misunderstood condition.”

The contest was adjudicated by a national panel of pain experts, whose comments include:

“I would give this first place out of those presented, because this is so powerful. It will be even more powerful when presented …”

“ …the story of a person suffering pain and its consequences for her and her family. It’s told with humour and candor. The hand‐down winner for me”.

The award is sponsored by Biovail Pharmaceuticals Canada and will be presented in Quebec City at the National Conference on May 29, 2009. The play will be presented at the 2010 National Conference, which will be held in Calgary, Alberta. There has also been interest in staging it in Australia, also in 2010.