A Matter Of Life and Death

"It was cancer -- a brutally sudden death sentence: the doctors told the author she had probably less than six months. For a woman with two young children and a full life, that prognosis was devastating, but also, in some ways, oddly liberating. And so began more than three years of horror, hope, and grace, as she learned to live, and even laugh, on borrowed time."

Winner, Essays, American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing, 2006 (Marjorie Williams, Vanity Fair)