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I Might Be in Love with All My Friends with Emily Rau
Episode 27626th June 2026 • The Burn • April Stearns
00:00:00 00:41:25

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In celebration of Pride Month, each Friday in June we’re re-sharing our favorite episodes featuring LGBTQ+ voices from the Wildfire community.

Emily Rau is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and the editor of the Willa Cather Archive.  In this episode Emily reads her essay “I Might Be in Love with All My Friends” from the 2023 “Love & Intimacy” issue of Wildfire. Emily’s story is about sensuality mixed in with a lot of milestones and steps in a breast cancer experience that we haven’t really heard before at Wildfire.  April and Emily will talk about why it was important to share a cancer story that folds into Emily’s queer and polyamorous life, honoring her grief in cancer, the role the polyamorous community played in Emily’s cancer journey and the fear of overtaxing people with our burdens. They will also discuss the prairie, and hear Emily beautifully explain the comfort and metaphor this particular landscape provided her in cancer. This episode contains explicit content about drugs and sex.

More about Emily: https://www.instagram.com/ejrau/

Purchase the “Love & Intimacy” issue of Wildfire Journal: https://www.wildfirecommunity.org/shop/p/queerincancerland24

Buy the Wildfire book Igniting the Fire Within: Stories of Healing, Hope & Humor, Inside Today’s Young Breast Cancer Community: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJVJ629F?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Get the free Wildfire “Hot Flashes” email newsletter: https://www.wildfirecommunity.org/newsletter?rq=newsletter

Learn about Wildfire writing workshops: https://www.wildfirecommunity.org/workshops

*Free* Get Wildfire and The Burn freebies here: https://www.wildfirecommunity.org/free

More about Wildfire Journal: 

https://www.wildfirecommunity.org

https://www.instagram.com/wildfire_bc_magazine/

https://www.facebook.com/wildfirecommunity

Information on submitting your story for consideration to be published in Wildfire Journal: https://www.wildfirecommunity.org/submissions

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