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JOIN US FOR A NOVEL NURSES BOOK CLUB MEETING |
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Looking for a fun way to socialize with other NNA Members?
Join Us Wednesday, December 3, 2025 7:00 to 8:30 pm (CST) on ZOOM
https://zoom.us/j/95860389818?pwd=YEvwegGBZPVKH2PuMDl4XABNn6fvLF.1
Meeting ID: 958 6038 9818
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NO registration—Only requirement is to read the book!
The selected read is: |
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The Most Potent Weapon by: Amy Haddad
The poems in Amy Haddad’s The Most Potent Weapon read like “enlightenments from life on the road,” to borrow from Paul Theroux, for those who journey with an end-stage or chronic illness. With a rare insider’s view of the world of health care from the dual perspectives of nurse and patient, Haddad reveals courage, frailty, grace, and humor in poems grounded in clinical authenticity.
The chapbook examines everyday life that is filtered through a cancer diagnosis. The poems highlight metaphors commonly used to describe the divides between the ill and well including differences in language, war imagery, and expectations regarding feminine beauty in form and language that are at once subtle, relatable, clear, and often jarring. This chapbook is like a series of postcards along the way on a trip to a strange land in which Haddad bears witness to unexpected, and at times, unbearable experiences encountered there. Anyone on a similar trip will find a willing companion in the poems in this book.
Amy Haddad started her career as a nurse working in mental health settings, medical/surgical nursing, and home care. Presently, she is a professor emerita at Creighton University. She is the author of the chapbook The Geography of Kitchens (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and An Otherwise Healthy Woman (Backwaters Press, 2022), that was a winner of the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year in 2022. Her poems have appeared in journals including: Aji Magazine, Persimmon Tree, DASH Literary Journal, Oberon Poetry Journal, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Months to Hours Poetry Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Glimpse Poetry Magazine, and Abandoned Mine. She and her husband live in a 100-year-old log cabin in the middle of a park in Omaha, Nebraska.
Available on for purchase at Bottlecap Press.
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The author will be joining us! |
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Amy Haddad, PhD, MSN, MFA, FAAN has educated nurses and pharmacists at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska since 1988 where she also held the Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Endowed Chair in the Health Sciences. In addition, Amy served as Director of the Center for Health Policy and Ethics at Creighton University from 2005 – 2018 and now holds the rank of Professor Emerita. She was selected in 2001 to be part of the Pew National Fellowship Program for Carnegie Scholars, studying the impact of patient simulations on health professional learning. She has also been a pioneer in the use of poetry, creative prose and narrative writing as approaches to teaching healthcare ethics.
Amy is the 2019 recipient of the Annals of Internal Medicine poetry prize for “Families Like This” for the best poem published in the journal. She won third-place for the 2019 Kalanithi Writing Awards from Stanford University for her poem “Dark Rides.” Her chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens,” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in early 2022. “An Otherwise Healthy Woman” was awarded twice in the 2022 AJN Book of the Year Awards: first place in the Creative Works Category and second place in the Professional Issues Category. In 2025, her second chapbook, “The Most Potent Weapon,” was published by Bottlecap Press. |
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NEBRASKA NURSES ASSOCIATION |
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c/o Midwest Multistate Division |
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