Gender, cancer care, & creative survival
Rae Spoon is a non-binary singer-songwriter from Calgary, Alberta. Their work often draws on their personal experiences growing up in a religiously conservative environment in Alberta and navigating the world as a queer person. More recently their creativity has been influenced by their experiences with gynecological cancer.
Rae’s work includes books First Spring Grass Fire (2012), Gender Failure with Ivan Coyote (2014), How to (Hide) Be(hind) Your Songs (2017) and the young adult novel Green Glass Ghosts (2021). Their music career spans twenty years and includes twelve solo albums (Coax Records) spanning folk, country, indie rock, and electronic genres. In April 2026 their 13th album, Assigned Country Singer At Birth, will be released.
They were diagnosed with cervical cancer in early 2020. Rae subsequently underwent chemotherapy and external and internal radiotherapy (brachytherapy) in BC. Being diagnosed with what is often a highly gendered cancer highlighted how the cancer system is not designed to offer equal care for gender-variant people.
Rae writes about what that experience was like, and how the system has been (slowly) changed since they had treatment in their article with the Calgary Herald.
“In less than a month, Spoon was penning essays on medium.com, an open platform for writers. Spoon wrote about the lack of training within the B.C. cancer centre to accommodate gender-variant patients. They wrote about having their pronouns mocked within earshot while waiting for a PET scan. At one point, Spoon and their non-binary partner were welcomed to the centre with a booming “Hello girls!” ”
In the article they share why their recent album Not Dead Yet is a powerful response to the cancer system and the treatment they endured:
“Not Dead Yet … may be Spoon’s most directly autobiographical album since My Prairie Home. In eight catchy pop songs, Spoon writes about facing their own mortality and the horror of being plunged into a health-care system that often seemed ill-prepared to treat gender-variant patients with sensitivity. This was especially true for a non-binary patient struggling with what the system labels “women’s cancer.””
Rae has written an upcoming book about their experience, Cancer Person which will be published by Arsenal Pulp press. Find out more about Rae’s writing and music on their website.
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