patient advocates

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A cancer survivor since 2012, Dana Cattani advocates for improved cancer support services at the individual, community, and national levels. Motivated by her own experience, she informally has mentored over 50 patients through a range of stages and outcomes: diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship, as well as recurrence and end-of-life decisions. She also serves on regional advisory and development committees at Cancer Support Community—South Central Indiana. In addition, she speaks to national cancer organizations about effective communication, mental health, and the importance of patient voices and perspectives.

Prior to this current work, Cattani spent more than 30 years teaching or volunteering at schools in California, North Carolina, and Indiana. She has taught language arts to elementary students, literature to high schoolers, professional writing to undergraduates, and research skills to graduate students. In addition, she has supervised student teachers, led pedagogy workshops, and coached communication and presentation skills in business executive education programs. In every context, she helps people sharpen their thinking and writing to enhance their effectiveness and expand their options for the future.

This summer, in celebration of another year of life, she reread George Elliot’s Middlemarch, took beginning poker lessons, and learned to keep her balance (mostly) on a stand-up paddle board in a peaceful lake.

 A Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Indiana University, Susan Gubar has collaborated with Sandra Gilbert for half a century on a series of publications from The Madwoman in the Attic to the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women and Still Mad. Some of this work earned them the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle. Her most recent solo books include two memoirs: Memoir of a Debulked Woman and Late-Life Love. 

From 2012 until 2021, Susan wrote the column “Living with Cancer” for the online New York Times. She received the Natalie Davis Spingarn Writers Award from the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship in 2014 and the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award from the Modern Language Association in 2021. Her current book-in-production focuses on very creative old ladies. Grand Finales: The Creative Longevity of Women Artists spotlights novelists, poets, painters, musicians, dancers, and sculptors who transformed the last stage of existence into a rousing conclusion. Susan lives in Bloomington, Indiana.