Holy Cross Alumna to Speak About her Battle with Cancer

WORCESTER, Mass. – Maria Judge ’77, author, educator, and cancer survivor, will give a lecture titled, “Healing, Hope and Humor: Surviving Cancer with Optimism,” on Thursday, April 2 at 4 p.m. in Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. After her talk, Judge will be available to sign copies of A Cup of Comfort For Breast Cancer Survivors (Adams Media, 2008), in which she has a story titled, “I Went and Washed That Hair Right Offa my Head.” The talk, which is sponsored by women’s and gender studies, is free and open to the public.

Edited by Colleen Sell, A Cup of Comfort For Breast Cancer Survivors: Inspiring Stories of Courage and Triumph is a collection of 46 personal essays and stories by women whose lives were drastically changed by their battle with and triumph over cancer. For every sale, a portion of the proceeds are donated to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a foundation dedicated to breast cancer research.

Judge holds degrees from both Holy Cross and Northeastern University, and she also studied at St. Louis University in Madrid, Spain. She spent 17 years as an associate dean at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She has also served as director of administration at Physicians for Human Rights and administrative officer for the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. A member of the National Writers Union and Grub Street Writers, she has been on the board of directors for the New England Coalition for Cancer Survivors.

Her cancer survival story was covered by Oprah Magazine, The Boston Globe, and in Alexandra Johnson’s Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal. Her writing has been published in The Boston Irish Reporter, Peace Corps Online, The Merton Seasonal, MIT Tech Talk, and Dan Wakefield’s The Story of Your Life: Writing a Spiritual Autobiography. She also read her stories in Washington, D.C. as part of the 40th anniversary of the Peace Corps.