Cortney Davis
Nurse
Practitioner, Women's Health Center
Danbury Hospital
Danbury, Connecticut
Cortney Davis
is a nurse
practitioner in Connecticut. She is the author of I Knew a Woman:
The Experience of the Female Body (Random House, 2001) and The Body
Flute (Adastra Press), and co-edited Between the Heartbeats: Poetry
and Prose by Nurses (University of Iowa Press). She lectures and
conducts writing workshops for health care professionals nationally.
Her writing has received numerous awards, including an NEA writing
fellowship.
Publications
Intensive Care:
More Poetry & Prose by Nurses
A companion volume
to the acclaimed anthology, Between the Heartbeats, Intensive Care:
More Poetry and Prose by Nurses continues the tradition: poetry,
short stories, and essays by registered nurses, glimpses into the
lives of patients and caregivers that will move and astonish
readers. May 2003
Intensive Care
received the 2003 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award
I Knew a Woman: The
Experience of the Female Body
I Knew a Woman is a
compelling and unusual book. Sometimes it's like a novel, with Davis
unraveling the stories of four women (composites of actual patients)
whom she sees at a clinic. At other times, it's
Davis's own health memoir, including the invasive and
inappropriately sexual exams her first doctor performed when she was
a teenager, and details of her breast biopsy. August 2001
I Knew a Woman
received the
Connecticut
Center for the
Book’s award for best non-fiction 2002.
Details of Flesh
In Details of
Flesh, poet Cortney Davis conducts a frank exploration of care
giving in its many guises—a nurse tending to her patients, a woman
relating to parents, children, lovers. July 1997
Between the
Heartbeats: Poetry & Prose by Nurses
Poetry and Prose by
Nurses is the first international anthology of creative writing by
registered nurses. Published in 1995 by the
University of
Iowa Press
and on the press’ best seller list ever since, Heartbeats contains
work from 49 nurses around the globe.
Body Flute
This small chapbook
of poems was hand set, hand printed, and hand sewn by Gary Metras's
Adastra Press in
Massachusetts.
Beautifully created, it contains beautiful poems as well, poems that
nurse practitioner and poet Cortney Davis writes about her work with
the human body, patients' suffering and recovery. Powerfully
written, as are all her works, and contained within the perfect
letterpress vehicle. A collector's item. December 1994.
Online Resources
Mothers Who Write: Cortney Davis
- In this candid interview Cortney Davis, award-winning poet and
author of I Knew a Woman: The Experience of the Female Body
(Random House), talks with Cheryl Dellasega about her careers as a
successful nurse practitioner and a writer, and how motherhood has
affected her life as a writer.
