Her Husband’s Wife’s Pancreas

Artist Statement

We always hear in the voice the voice of a particular someone. A body and the history of that body, its sinews and its surfaces. We hear all of the things it has taken in and absorbed and expelled; all of the things it has wanted and carried and lost. We hear echoes of all the places a body has been and of the place in which it finds itself at any given time—all restless, reverberating back at us at so many cycles per second. When we hear a voice, we hear a body and it hits us. Passing through us, it makes us shudder. It leaves us but never leaves us unchanged.

What happens when a body is gone but a voice remains? What do we make of the some-body who still wants to well up from within it? I’m seeking a place where the voices of those we’ve loved and lost might meet and go on speaking. What would they say? What would we want them to say? What would they feel for each other?

Erin Anderson is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she directs the Professional and New Media Writing Program. She is the author of “What Hadn’t Happened” (winner of The Atavist’s Digital Storymakers Award, 2013) and “The Olive Project” (winner of the Kairos Best Webtext Award, 2012). She holds her Ph.D. in Critical and Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. Visit her at www.erinand.com.