After 18 years living with cancer, a poet offers 'Fifty Entries Against Despair'

Christian Wiman is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose. He's been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and served as editor of POETRY magazine. (Danielle Chapman/FSG)

Poet and memoirist Christian Wiman was 39 when he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Now 57, he's endured many rounds of chemo, a bone marrow transplant and several experimental therapies over the past 18 years. He also turned to what he terms "God."

Though Wiman grew up in an evangelical church in West Texas, he spent many years as a self-described "ambivalent atheist" before finding religion again.