Writing workshop for people in fertility treatment
Narrative Medicine at the University of Copenhagen has carried out a writing workshop for people undergoing fertility treatment, facilitated by author Tine Høeg.
The participants created creative texts which together form an aesthetic universe that can provide other patients, their relatives, and healthcare professionals with a deeper insight into what it means to be in fertility treatment.
Narrative Medicine (2024–2025) is led by Associate Professor Anders Juhl Rasmussen at the Department of Nordeic Studies and Linguistics and supported by the Velux Foundation.
In a 6-week course in the autumn of 2024, the 12 recruited participants worked creatively with the feelings and thoughts connected to undergoing fertility treatment. Together with Tine Høeg, they read and discussed various kinds of literary texts and carried out a wide range of writing exercises. There was no requirement to have read literature beforehand or to have prior experience with creative writing.
In the end, the facilitator and the project’s research leader selected one text from each participant based on criteria of sensory immediacy and the greatest possible variety. All participants then read their own text aloud in a sound studio, and graphic designer Clara Jetsmark finally created a short animated film for two of the texts and added moving illustrations to the other ten. Only the animated films are gathered on this website, with English subtitles.
See the Danish website with all the texts.
The purpose of the project was to test and evaluate a writing workshop for people undergoing fertility treatment. This goal was achieved through a master’s thesis written by Andrea Koefoed Friedrichsen, entitled (in English translation) Exploratory Writing and Transformative Reading (in Danish, 2025), as well as a peer-reviewed international research article entitled “How can creative writing and reading aloud transform the stories told by people in fertility treatment?” (in press, 2025). Another aim was to create an aesthetic product that could reach out to others in treatment, reduce loneliness and shame, and at the same time provide staff at fertility clinics with a deeper understanding of how fertility treatment is experienced from a user’s perspective, and what reflections people may have about biological parenthood.
In parallel, Petrine Michelsen conducted interviews on the experiences of ethnic minorities in their encounters with the Danish healthcare system in relation to fertility treatment. This study resulted in a master’s thesis at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies and has been summarized in a flyer (in English) in order to provide an even broader picture of experiences with the treatment.
Read Experiences of Fertility Treatment: Voices of Women with Diverse Ethnic Backgrounds (online-flyer).
It is our hope that fertility clinics at the hospitals, the Danish patient association ”Fertilitet og Tab”, as well as other stakeholders, will recognize the value of linking to the site, so that the aesthetic universe will be visited.