Narrative Medicine Rounds

For our December Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Maura Spiegel, who teaches literature and film at Columbia University and Barnard College. She is co-director of the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Humanities and Ethics at Vagelos Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she also teaches a film course to first-year medical students. She has lectured on Narrative Medicine in Venice, London, Dublin, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Baroda, India, and in cities around the U.S. She co-authored The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017); The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying and Living on (Anchor/Doubleday), The Breast Book: An Intimate and Curious History (Workman), which was a Book-of-the-Month Club-Quality Paperbacks selection; she edited and introduced new editions of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes for the Barnes & Noble Classics Series. With Rita Charon, MD, PhD, she edited the journal Literature and Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press) for seven years. She has written for The New York Times and Newsday and has published articles on the history of the emotions, Charles Dickens, Victorian fashion, diamonds in the movies, among many other topics. Her new book Sidney Lumet: A Life, a biography of legendary American film director Sidney Lumet, is published by St. Martin’s Press. Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. These events are free and open to the public.

For our November Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Deborah Levy, the acclaimed author of six novels including Swimming Home and Hot Milk, both nominated for the Booker Prize, and most recently The Man Who Saw Everything, to be published in the USA in October 2019. Levy will be speaking about “Hypochondria and History: Searching for Story.” About her novel Hot Milk, Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad And Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present, said: “A hot Attic sun glares down on Levy’s novel, imbuing her mere mortals with a mythic dimension and exposing the monsters within. Maternal hysteria here is more toxic to a daughter who struggles to leave home and become woman than the floating jellyfish that choke the sea. Only Elena Ferrante writes of the seepages of illness and woman’s identity in the family with equal insight. As gripping as it is unputdownable, Hot Milk is a novel by a writer at the peak of her talents.” Levy’s two works of memoir, Things I Don’t Want to Know and The Cost of Living, have been widely translated across the world. Levy has written for The Royal Shakespeare Company; her dramatizations of two of Freud’s case studies, Dora and The Wolfman, were broadcast by the BBC. Levy was a 2018-19 Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Paris, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

For our October Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Farah Jasmine Griffin, the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the inaugural chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department and Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. Professor Griffin received her B.A. from Harvard, where she majored in American History and Literature and her PhD in American Studies from Yale. Her major fields of interest are American and African American literature, music, and history. She has published widely on issues of race and gender, feminism, jazz and cultural politics. Griffin is the author of Who Set You Flowin?: The African American Migration Narrative (Oxford, 1995), Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford Connecticut, 1854-1868 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001) and co-author, with Salim Washington, of Clawing At the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (Thomas Dunne, 2008). Her most recent book is Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II (Basic Books, 2013). Professor Griffin collaborated with composer and pianist Geri Allen and director and actor S. Epatha Merkerson on two theatrical projects, for which she wrote the book: The first “Geri Allen and Friends Celebrate the Great Jazz Women of the Apollo” with Lizz Wright, Dianne Reeves, Teri Lyne Carrington and others, premiered on the main stage of the Apollo Theater in May 2013. “A Conversation with Mary Lou,” featuring vocalist Carmen Lundy, premiered at Harlem Stage in March 2014 and was performed at The John F. Kennedy Center in May 2016. Her essays and articles have appeared in Essence, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Harper's Bazaar, Art Forum and other publications. She is also a frequent radio commentator on political and cultural issues. Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. These events are free and open to the public.

For our September Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Eve Ensler, the Tony Award winning playwright, activist, and author of the Obie Award winning theatrical phenomenon The Vagina Monologues, published in over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries and recently heralded by The New York Times as one of the most important plays of the past 25 years, among numerous other honors. Ensler will speak about her new book The Apology, a powerful memoir where she revisits her childhood in an imagined letter from her abusive father. In a recent review, The Guardian's Arifa Akbar called The Apology a "profound, imaginative and devastating book." Moderating the event will be Suzanne B. Goldberg, Columbia University Executive Vice President for University Life and Director, Center for Gender & Sexuality Law & Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic. In addition, a representative from the Sexual Violence Response & Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Support Center, Columbia Health, will be at the talk to answer questions and provide information. Ensler is the founder of V-Day, the 20-year-old global activist movement, which has raised over 100 million dollars to end violence to and against all women and girls (cisgender, transgender and gender non-conforming). She is also the founder of One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries. She is a co-founder of the City of Joy, a revolutionary center for women survivors of violence in Bukavu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), along with Christine Schuler Deschryver and Dr. Denis Mukwege, and appeared – along with Ms. Deschryver and Dr. Mukwege – in the award-winning documentary film City of Joy released globally as a Netflix Original in 190 countries. Her writings regularly appear in The Guardian and TIME Magazine. She was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.” Ensler is the 2018 recipient of the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lily Award. A survivor of violence, this author and activist has dedicated her life to ending violence against women and girls.

For our May Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Ph.D., who is the Chief of the Division of Ethics and faculty in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University. Dr. Lee is a medical anthropologist with extensive experience leading empirical bioethics research that focuses on the sociocultural and ethical dimensions of emerging genomic technologies. Dr. Lee will speak about "Metaphors, Diversity and Trust in Communicating Precision Medicine." Before coming to Columbia, Dr. Lee taught for nearly two decades at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and in the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford University. She leads studies on the governance and use of biospecimens and patient data in research and the ethics of inclusion and categorizing diversity in human genetic variation research and translational genomics. Her projects include The Ethics of Inclusion: Diversity in Precision Medicine Research; Beyond Consent: Patient Preferences for Governance of Use of Clinical Samples and Data; and Social Networking and Personal Genomics: Implications for Health Research. Dr. Lee is a Hastings Center Fellow and has served as Chairperson of the Institutional Review Board at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and on the NIH/NHGRI Coriell Consultation and Oversight Committee of the International Haplotype Map. She currently serves on both the Scientific Advisory and Bioethics Boards of the Kaiser Permanente National Research Biobank, the NIH/NHGRI Genomics and Society Working Group and on the editorial board of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics. Dr. Lee received her undergraduate degree in Human Biology from Stanford University and her doctorate from the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco. Her postdoctoral fellowship training in Bioethics and Genetics was in the School of Medicine at Stanford University. Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Medical Center. These events are free and open to the public.

For our April Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change, a leading online racial justice organization. Driven by more than 1.4 million members working to build political and cultural power for Black communities, Color Of Change is creating a more human and less hostile world for all people in America. Color Of Change uses an innovative combination of technology, research, media savvy and local community engagement to build powerful movements and change the industries that affect Black people’s lives: in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, Washington, prosecutor offices, capitol hills and city halls around the country. Rashad has led the organization in developing cutting-edge strategies to accelerate reform in the criminal justice system and win justice for its victims, increase electoral participation, cut off corporate support for right-wing organizations, and change the representation of Black people and social issues in news and entertainment media. Notable victories include redefining the role of local prosecutors, moving over a dozen prosecutors and candidates to reduce mass incarceration and police violence through changes in practice and policy such as ending money bail; forcing over 100 corporations to pull out of the secretive right-wing policy shop, ALEC, following the murder of Trayvon Martin; successfully pressuring corporate leaders to abandon the Trump Business Council and stop enabling the growth of white nationalist groups through their services; framing and winning the federal protection of net neutrality as a key civil rights issue; changing hiring practices in Hollywood, as well as the representation of both race and the criminal justice system; working with Airbnb, Google and Facebook to identify and implement policies for diversity in hiring, eliminate racist and inaccurate content from their platforms and prevent predatory advertising; and forcing Pat Buchanan and Bill O’Reilly off the air. Under Rashad’s leadership, Color Of Change has grown by a million members and dozens of staff, expanded to four offices across the country and has exponentially increased pathways for people to pursue racial justice, including cultural influencers and industry insiders. Successful Color Of Change strategies have been profiled in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Fast Company, Wired and The Hollywood Reporter, and on CNN, NPR, PBS, BET and MSNBC. Rashad has appeared in hundreds of articles and op-eds in major national and local news sources, and is a regular keynote speaker at events across the country. In 2015, Fast Company named Color Of Change the 6th Most Innovative Company in the world, and named Color Of Change the 2nd Most Innovative Company in the nonprofit sector in 2018. In 2016, the Stanford Social Innovation Review profiled Color Of Change for its integrated online/offline strategies, “pursuing the fight for racial justice at Internet speed.” Previously, Rashad served as Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD, leading all of the organization’s advocacy, strategic research, messaging and large-scale media campaigns. These winning culture change and narrative change initiatives helped transform the media landscape, successfully paving the way for broad acceptance and justice for LGBTQ people. Rashad has been recognized as someone to watch by the Ebony Power 100, The Root 100 and Crain’s New York Business 40 under 40. He is the proud recipient of awards from organizations as varied as ADCOLOR, the United Church of Christ and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Foundation. Rashad serves on the boards of Demos and the Hazen Foundation. Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Medical Center. These events are free and open to the public.

For our December Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Michael Grabell, an investigative reporter for ProPublica, covering economic issues, labor, immigration and trade. He has reported on the ground from more than 35 states, as well as some of the remotest villages in Alaska and Guatemala. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and the New York Times and on NPR, Vice and CBS News. This year, his stories on retaliation against immigrant workers won the Aronson Award for social justice journalism. Mr. Grabell will speak about the process reporters and journalists go through to delve into the truth of a breaking news story, specifically discussing how a reporting team at ProPublica approached the news about the treatment of children at the border, both the groups who were unaccompanied as well as those separated from parents, this past summer. In 2016, he and NPR reporter Howard Berkes received a Gerald Loeb Award for business journalism and top honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors for their series on the dismantling of workers’ comp systems across the country. Grabell’s series on the growth of temp work and its impact on workplace safety helped spur new laws in California and Illinois. The series won the Barlett & Steele Award for investigative business journalism, the American Society of News Editors Award for reporting on diversity and an award from the Online News Association for innovation in investigative journalism. He is the author of two books — a narrative history on President Obama’s attempts to revive the economy called Money Well Spent? and the poetry chapbook Macho Man, which won the Finishing Line Press competition in 2013. He is a graduate of Princeton University and started his journalism career writing obituaries for the Daily Record in Parsippany, N.J. Note: Topher Sanders, who was originally scheduled to speak, has scheduling conflicts.

“Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness and Humanity”: A Talk by Ronald Epstein, MD For our November Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Ronald Epstein, MD, a family physician, teacher, researcher and writer, who has devoted his career to understanding and improving patient-physician communication, quality of care and clinician mindfulness. He will discuss his compassionate work and recent book, entitled Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness and Humanity that was published last year by Scribner. Dr. Epstein He conducted groundbreaking research into communication in medical settings and developed innovative educational programs that promote mindfulness, communication and self-awareness. Ron directs the Center for Communication and Disparities Research and co-directs the Deans Teaching Fellowship program and Mindful Practice Programs at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry where he is Professor of Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Oncology and Medicine (Palliative Care). A graduate of Wesleyan University and Harvard Medical School, he is recipient of lifetime achievement awards relating to communication and humanism, a Fulbright fellowship in Barcelona and fellowships at the University of Sydney and the Brocher Institute in Geneva. He has published over 250 articles and book chapters.

For our October Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Nina Kraus, PhD, who is the Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences, Neurobiology and Otolaryngologyat Northwestern University. Her talk will center on the ways sound processing in the brain is a reflection of brain health. "How our brains respond to sound reveals each person's unique narrative of their life experiences," says Dr. Kraus. "We have discovered a way to objectively capture the imprint that sounds leave on our brains." Dr. Kraus, who is a scientist, inventor and amateur musician, will examine the promise of measuring these sound-prints to assess and manage sports-related concussions as well as the many ways music training is beneficial for the brain, strengthens our communication skills and can inform healthcare, education and social policy. For more information about Nina Kraus’s work and the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, go to www.brainvolts.northwestern.edu

For our first Narrative Medicine Rounds for Fall 2018, we welcome Dr. Haider Warraich, whose book Modern Death deepens and enriches the conversation about death and dying that’s been growing since Dr. Sherwin Nuland’s classic How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter and Atul Guwande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. About the book, which was published last year by St. Martin’s Press, Siddhartha Mukherjee, who is the author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene, and an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University, writes: “Haider Warraich’s elegant and poignant book takes us on an unforgettable journey. A caring and thoughtful doctor, he also writes beautifully. He succeeds in humanizing a complex topic and gives us remarkable insights about the changing nature of ‘modern death.’” Dr. Warraich, who graduated from medical school in Pakistan in 2009, did his residency in internal medicine at one of Harvard Medical School's main teaching hospitals, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is currently a fellow in cardiology at Duke University Medical Center. His medical and Op Ed pieces have appeared in many media outlets including the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and the LA Times among others.

For our May Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome writer Harriet A. Washington, who will be interviewed by Randy Cohen, creator of the radio program, Person Place Thing. Harriet A. Washington has been a fellow in ethics at the Harvard Medical School, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University. As a writer and editor, she has worked for USA Today and several other publications, been a Knight Fellow at Stanford University. She was the Editor of the Harvard Public Health Review and has written for The New England Journal of Medicine. Her books include "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present" (2008), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction; "Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself—And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future" (2012) and most recently, "Infectious Madness: The Surprising Science of How We 'Catch' Mental Illness" (2016). Ms. Washington is currently working on a new book on the underappreciated consequences of environmental poisoning. Randy Cohen is a writer, whose humor pieces, essays and stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Young Love Comics). For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for the The New York Times Magazine. His most recent book is Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything.

Our April 2018 Narrative Medicine Rounds, welcomed the novelist Richard Ford, who speaks about his memoir, " Between them: Remembering my Parents," published in 2017 by The Ecco Press. Mr. Ford, the Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Roman Professor of the Humanities, has been teaching at Columbia University's School of the Arts since 2012. For Mr. Ford, whose 1995 novel Independence Day, was the first book to receive both the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen/Faulkner Award, the questions of what his parents dreamed of, how they loved each other and loved him became a striking portrait of American life in the mid-century in Between Them. Bringing his candor, wit and intelligence to his most intimate and mysterious of landscapes- our parents' lives- he delivers an exploration of memory, intimacy and love.

For our March Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Sayantani DasGupta, MD MPH, who teaches in the Master’s Program in Narrative Medicine, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and the Institute of Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. Dr. DasGupta will be speaking about writing her novel, The Serpent’s Secret, which is the first book in the new Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond series just published by Scholastic Press. March Narrative Medicine Rounds are co-sponsored by the Program in Narrative Medicine, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and Reflexions: The Literary and Fine Arts Journal of Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. DasGupta, the daughter of Indian immigrants, wanted to share her love of books with her own kids but was saddened by the lack of heroes that looked like her family and neighbors. She decided to write her own stories, returning to the folktales filled with bloodthirsty demons and enchanted animals that she heard on childhood trips to India. Originally trained in pediatrics and public health, Dr. DasGupta is also the author, co-author or co-editor of several books, including a book of Bengali folktales, The Demon Slayers and Other Stories (Interlink 1995), and the recent Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford 2016).

For our first rounds in 2018, we welcome Dr. Gayatri Devi, a neurologist and graduate of the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia, who will speak about her book The Spectrum of Hope: An Optimistic and New Approach to Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias (Workman, 2017). Imagine finding a glimmer of good news in a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. And imagine how that would change the outlook of the 5 million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, not to mention their families, loved ones, and caretakers. A neurologist who’s been specializing in dementia and memory loss for more than 20 years, Dr. Gayatri Devi rewrites the story of Alzheimer’s by defining it as a spectrum disorder—like autism, Alzheimer’s is a disease that affects different people differently. She encourages people who are worried about memory impairment to seek a diagnosis, because early treatment will enable doctors and caregivers to manage the disease more effectively through drugs and other therapies. Told through the stories of Dr. Devi’s patients, The Spectrum of Hope is the kind of narrative medical writing that grips the reader, humanizes the science, and offers equal parts practical advice and wisdom with skillful ease. There are chapters on how to maintain independence and dignity; how to fight depression, anxiety, and apathy; how to communicate effectively with a person suffering from dementia. Plus chapters on sexuality, genetics, going public with the diagnosis, even putting together a bucket list—because through her practice, Dr. Devi knows that the majority of Alzheimer’s patients continue to live and work in their communities. Gayatri Devi, MD, MS, FACP, FAAN, is Director of the New York Memory and Healthy Aging Services and an attending physician at Lenox Hill Hospital/Northwell Health and a Clinical Professor of Neurology at Downstate Medical Center. She is a board certified neurologist, with additional board certifications in Pain Medicine, Psychiatry, and Behavioral Neurology, and she served on the faculty of New York University’s School of Medicine as Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry until 2015. She is the author of over 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals on the topic of memory loss, as well as the books Estrogen, Memory and Menopause, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Alzheimer’s Disease, and A Calm Brain. She lives and practices in New York City.

For our December Narrative Medicine Rounds, we celebrate the extraordinary book Narrative in Social Work Practice: The Power and Possibility of Story by Ann Burack-Weiss, Lynn Sara Lawrence, and Lynne Bamat Mijangos,eds. The book features first-person accounts by social workers who have successfully integrated narrative theory and approaches into their practice. Contributors describe innovative interventions with a wide range of individuals, families, and groups facing a variety of life challenges. One author describes a family in crisis when a promising teenage girls suddenly takes to her bed for several years; another brings narrative practice to a Bronx trauma center; and another finds that poetry writing can enrich the lives of people living with dementia. In some chapters, the authors turn narrative techniques inward and use them as vehicles of self discovery. Throughout, Narrative in Social Work Practice showcases the flexibility and appeal of narrative methods and demonstrates how they can be empowering and fulfilling for clients and social workers alike. About the book, Rita Charon says in the foreward, “This book can transform social work practice. It is both revolutionary in concept and loyal to social work traditions in spirit. It illuminates the social and personal dimensions that attract social workers to their work in the first place and proposes innovative ideas and methods that keep the practice forever new.” Ann Burack-Weiss taught for thirty years at the Columbia University School of Social Work and is now associate faculty in Columbia’s Program in Narrative Medicine. She is the author of The Caregiver’s Tale: Loss and Renewal in Family Life (Columbia, 2006) and The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman’s Life (Columbia, 2015). Lynn Sara Lawrence is a practicing psychotherapist in New York City. She has taught at the New York School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and has contributed to Smith College Studies in Social Work and Psychoanalytic Social Work. Lynne Bamat Mijangos is practicum supervisor for the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She is the author of Baby Girl Mijangos (2004) and is a contributor to Virginia Woolf Miscellany.

For our November Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome back Elisabeth Rosenthal, who is a Harvard-trained medical doctor and veteran journalist, first with The New York Times and currently editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News, the independent foundation funded reporting project focusing on health and health policy news. Dr. Rosenthal will talk about what she discovered researching and reporting the way healthcare has become a business in the last twenty-five years and many of the lessons she learned while writing An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. Elisabeth Rosenthal spent 22 years as a correspondent at The New York Times, where she covered a variety of beats from healthcare to environment to reporter in the Beijing bureau. While in China she covered SARs, bird flu and the emergence of HIV/AIDS in rural areas. Her two-year-long NYT series “Paying Till it Hurts” (2013-14) won many prizes for both health reporting and its creative use of digital tools. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School and briefly practiced medicine in a New York City emergency room before converting to journalism.

For our May Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome medical journalist, Harriet A. Washington, who will be interviewed by writer Randy Cohen, creator of the radio program, Person Place Thing, an interview show based on this idea: People are particularly engaging when they speak not directly about themselves but about something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing that are important to them. The result? Surprising stories from great talkers. Person Place Thing is produced with JCC in Manhattan and sponsored by WAMC Northeast Public Radio in partnership with Humanities NY. Harriet A. Washington has been a fellow in ethics at the Harvard Medical School, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University. As a journalist and editor, she has worked for USA Today and several other publications, been a Knight Fellow at Stanford University and has written for such academic forums as the Harvard Public Health Review and The New England Journal of Medicine. Her books include Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (2008), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction; Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself—And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future (2012) and most recently, Infectious Madness: The Surprising Science of How We “Catch” Mental Illness (2016). Randy Cohen is a writer, whose humor pieces, essays and stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Young Love Comics). He has won four Emmys, receiving three for his writing for Late Night with David Letterman and one for his work on Michael Moore’s TV Nation. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for the The New York Times Magazine. His most recent book is Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything.

For our October Narrative Medicine Rounds, we celebrate the work of the late poet Max Ritvo (1990-2016), whose acclaimed book of poems Four Reincarnations (Milkweed Edition, 2016) was written in New York and Los Angeles over the course of a long battle with cancer. We use the word "presence" in the title because the goal is to bring Max Ritvo into the room—not just through his poetry, but through his presence, so movingly captured in videos and audio recordings that allow him to read his own poetry for the audience. Poet Lucie Brock-Broido, who is Director of Poetry in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, will introduce the poet's work, providing context and connecting the many facets of Ritvo's work and world. The idea of "presence" also comes into play because the essence of his poetry is a presence-ing, a bringing near and being present in spite of any journeying off and going far. He is a poet of exquisite embodiment, a fact that is crucial to his essence and especially relevant for Narrative Medicine, which concerns itself with the power of the embodied presence, in spite of illness and even in the face of death. Ritvo's poetry and presence are death-defying, as expressed in Ritvo's own words: "Let room mean death or room mean life, but let the room always be full." Max Ritvo was also the author of the chapbook AEONS, chosen by Jean Valentine to receive the Poetry Society of American Chapbook Fellowship in 2014. Ritvo's poetry has appeared in the The New Yorker, Poetry, and the Boston Review, and as a Poem-a-Day for Poets.org. His prose and interviews have appeared in publications such as Lit Hub, Huffington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Three of his poems will appear in the next issue of Parnassus; A Public Space has one of his poems in a forthcoming issue as well. Milkweed Editions has announced the 2018 publication of Letters from Max, a book of his correspondence with playwright Sarah Ruhl, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Lucie Brock-Broido is a poet, whose most recent book of poems, Stay, Illusion (Alfred A. Knopf), was a Finalist in Poetry for the 2013 National Book Award, 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her previous collections include Trouble in Mind, The Master Letters, and A Hunger. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, Best American Poetry, and The New Yorker. Brock-Broido has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Awards. She is Director of Poetry in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. Narrative Medicine Rounds: Speaking of Heaven: The Poetry and Presence of Max Ritvo. October 4, 2017 5-7PM Location: Faculty Club of Columbia University Medical Center, Physicians & Surgeons Building, 630 W. 168th St., 4th Floor, New York, NY

For our September Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Bob Mankoff, the former cartoon editor of The New Yorker and the current humor and cartoon editor of Esquire. He will speak about the intersection of the illness experience and humor and the ways each of these life-changing forces can transform the experience of health and healthcare. Bob Mankoff will be introduced by Ben Schwartz, MD, a . . Mfaculty member at Columbia University Medical Center who works with both the Departments of Surgery and Medicine. Bob Mankoff has had an accomplished career in the funny business. In 2015, he was profiled in a “60 Minutes,” in which Morley Safer dubbed him the “Cartoon Doctor.” In 2013, he gave a TED talk, entitled “Anatomy of a New Yorker cartoon.” He edited national 2006 bestseller The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, which featured all 68,647 cartoons published in The New Yorker since its debut in 1925. He describes this as the “golden age of humor,” where humor helped build personal connections in business and personal relationships. An accomplished cartoonist, Mankoff has edited dozens of cartoon books and published four of his own. Over 950 of his cartoons have been published in The New Yorker over the past 20 years, including the best-selling New Yorker cartoon of all time (the harried businessman at his desk with a phone to his ear, reviewing his calendar and saying: “No, Thursday’s out, how about never. Is never good for you?”) He is the author of The Naked Cartoonist, a book published in 2003 on the creative process behind developing magazine-style cartoons. His most recent book is the memoir How About Never–Is Never Good For You?: My Life in Cartoons (Henry Holt, 2015) Mankoff, who graduated from Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences in 1966, entered the doctoral program at City University of New York to pursue a degree in experimental psychology. At age 30, just short of completing his dissertation, he decided to use his know-how in a new way: as a cartoonist. In 1977, Mankoff spent four months creating hundreds of original cartoons; it took more than a year to break into The New Yorker–and within three years became a regular contributor. On April 30, 2017, Mankoff retired from The New Yorker and two days later un-retired himself to become humor and cartoon editor of Esquire. Benjamin Schwartz, BA, MD, Columbia University, who will introduce Bob Mankoff, is a faculty member at Columbia University Medical Center, working with both the Departments of Surgery and Medicine. His work focuses on using visual storytelling techniques and the principles of Narrative Medicine to train expressive and empathetic physicians. He also focuses on developing engaging educational content for the web and social media to improve health literacy amongst the general population. Dr. Schwartz is also a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker, where he sneaks his daughter’s name into each of his cartoons.

For our April Rounds, we welcome Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider and Dr. Jessica Nutik Zitter, two of the key clinicians involved in Extremis, a verité documentary exploring the harrowing decisions that doctors, families and patients face in urgent end-of- life cases. With access to the intensive care unit of a public hospital, the film offers a uniquely intimate look at the intersection of science, faith and humanity.

For the March Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Rachel Aviv, who will talk about writing and reporting on psychosis. Aviv joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2013 and often writes about psychiatry and bioethics; she has written articles on euthanasia, psychosis, addiction, and crime. She won the 2016 Scripps Howard Award for “Your Son Is Deceased,” a story on police shootings. She was named a Livingston Award finalist in 2013 and 2016. Aviv has also taught writing workshops to medical students at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and at the Sophie Davis School of Medicine. An archive of her articles and essays for The New Yorker can be found here: http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/rachel-aviv.

For our first Narrative Medicine Rounds in 2017, we welcome Dr. Lucy Kalanithi to the Columbia University Medical Center for a Q&A conversation with the Program in Narrative Medicine's Creative Director Nellie Hermann. Dr. Lucy Kalanithi, MD, FACP, is an internal medicine physician and faculty member at the Stanford School of Medicine in Palo Alto, CA. She completed her medical degree at Yale, where she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha national medical honor society, her residency at the University of California-San Francisco, and a postdoctoral fellowship training in healthcare delivery innovation at Stanford’s Clinical Excellence Research Center. Dr. Kalanithi is the widow of the late Dr. Paul Kalanithi, author of The New York Times bestselling memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, for which she wrote the epilogue. At the cross-section of her career as a medical professional and her personal experience standing alongside her husband during his life, diagnosis, treatment, and death, Dr. Kalanithi has special interests in healthcare value, meaning in medicine, patient-centered care and end-of-life care. She has appeared on PBS NewsHour, NPR Morning Edition, and Yahoo News with Katie Couric, and been interviewed for People, NPR, and The New York Times. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her daughter, Elizabeth Acadia.

By Rita Charon, Sayantani DasGupta, Nellie Hermann, Craig Irvine, Eric R. Marcus, Edgar Rivera Colón, Danielle Spencer, Maura Spiegel Just published by Oxford University Press, "The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine" is the definitive work on the current state of the field of Narrative Medicine. Written by the founders of the field, the book articulates and embodies the complex foundations of this now internationally robust discipline. Through inter-related chapters on social justice, liberatory pedagogy, classical Greek philosophy, phenomenology, narrative and literary theories of the acts of reading, narrative ethics, and the sources of creativity, the authors present to readers a compelling argument for the need to fortify clinical practice with the creative and narrative capacities to recognize and affiliate with individual patients and to work toward health care justice to improve the quality of health care for all. The authors hope these essays will help our colleagues to join us in developing the conceptual and practical foundations of our shared field.

“In A Different Key: The Story of Autism” is a book that was more than seven years in the making, and since its publication this year, it has advanced the discussion about autism in the public and medical worlds. In our November Narrative Medicine Rounds, Emmy Award–winning correspondent John Donvan and Peabody Award–winning television news producer Caren Zucker will talk about the book, a narrative that offers new insight into the seminal moments of the past near-century: the rise of the disability rights movement, deinstitutionalization, the effort to mainstream those on the spectrum, breakthroughs in neuroscience and our understanding of the mind, and the birth of the neurodiversity movement. Donvan and Zucker, whose own families have been affected by autism, have been on the front lines of reporting on the social, medical, and legal aspects of autism since 1999, even before it became a national topic of conversation. Their groundbreaking ABC News series, Echoes of Autism, launched in the early 2000s as network television’s first regular autism beat. Caren Zucker is an award-winning veteran television news producer who has worked most extensively with ABC News. In addition to her experience in breaking news and live broadcast, she produced and co-wrote a six-part series on autism for PBS in 2011. In 2010, John and Caren co-wrote a piece for Atlantic magazine, "Autism's First Child", which was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. John Donvan is a multiple Emmy Award-winning Nightline correspondent with a long career in journalism. Prior to serving as a regular correspondent to Nightline, he was the Chief White House Correspondent for ABC News. He is the moderator for Intelligence Squared US debates, heard on NPR stations, and has also performed on stage, starring in his truth-based One Man Show, Lose the Kid.

For our October Narrative Medicine Rounds, the Program in Narrative Medicine is honored to present Siri Hustvedt, who is one of the leading American writers of the 21st century. A new book by the publisher DeGruyter, entitled "Zones of Focused Ambiguity in Siri Hustvedt’s Works," edited by Johanna Hartmann, Christine Marks, and Hubert Zapf, has just been released, and Hustvedt will speak about the ideas and analysis within the new collection. The book brings together essays from various inter-disciplinary perspectives to analyze and interpret her fictional and non-fictional works and is structured into the parts: “Literary Creation and Communication,” Psychoanalysis and Philosophy,” “Medicine and Narrative,” “Vision, Perception, and Power,” and “Trauma, Memory, and the Ambiguities of Self.” There is also an interview with Hustvedt, in which she elucidates her personal conception of her own creative processes of writing. Hustvedt, who has a Ph.D. from Columbia, is a lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Among her works are the novels The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996), What I Loved (2003), The Sorrows of an American (2008), The Summer without Men (2011), and The Blazing World (2014). Her upcoming book, “A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind,” published by Simon and Schuster, will be out in December.

In December 2014, Mother Jones senior reporter Shane Bauer took a job as a corrections officer at a Louisiana prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country’s second largest private-prison company. During his four months on the job, Bauer would witness stabbings, an escape, lockdowns and interventions by the state Department of Corrections as the company struggled to maintain control over 1,500 inmates. He was paid $9 an hour and was placed in a unit where he and another officer supervised hundreds of inmates. His in-depth narrative and series of videos provide a gripping look inside a prison where both staff and inmates were pushed to the edge. Read the story... While at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, the journalist had an up-close look at the impact of the private prison model on health care. Bauer met inmates struggling to get medical attention, including one who lost his legs and fingers to gangrene after months of neglect. Mental health assistance was minimal. The entire prison had just one part-time psychologist and one part-time psychiatrist. Suicidal inmates were placed in solitary confinement, where they were given meals that fall below USDA caloric standards. Bauer writes about one man who protested the lack of mental health services for years. After being waitlisted for mental health services for two years, he committed suicide. He weighed 71 pounds at the time of his death. Shane Bauer is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism. He is also the co-author, with Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal, of A Sliver of Light, a memoir of his two years as a prisoner in Iran. To stay up-to-date on Shane Bauer’s work, follow him on Twitter @shane_bauer or go to his website, www.shanebauer.net.

Elisabeth L. Rosenthal, a New York Times correspondent who trained as a medical doctor, is the author of Paying Till it Hurts, an award-winning 2 year-long series on health care costs and pricing. She is currently completing a book about the commercialization of American medicine, to be published by Penguin Random House early in 2017. During 20 years as a reporter/correspondent for the New York Times, she has covered a wide variety of beats – from health care to international environment to general assignment reporting for 6 years in China. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times’ Sunday Review section. Ms. Rosenthal’s journalism awards include the Victor Cohn Prize for medical reporting, the Association of Health Care Journalists’ beat reporting prize, the Online New Association’s award for Feature reporting and the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott prize. She has been a Poynter Fellowat Yale and a Ferris Visiting Professor at Princeton. Born in New York City, Ms. Rosenthal received a B.S. degree in biology from Stanford University and an M.A. degree in English literature from Cambridge University. She holds an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. She trained and worked at Weill-Cornell Medical Center in the Emergency Department before becoming a full-time journalist.

George Yancy is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He received his BA with honors in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, his first Master's Degree from Yale University in Philosophy and his second Master's in Africana Studies from NYU, where he received a distinguished Fellowship. His Ph.D (with distinction) is in Philosophy from Duquesne University. He has authored, edited or co-edited 17 books. His first authored book received an Honorable Mention from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights and three of his edited books have received CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles. His series of interviews on race in The Stone, The New York Times, is recognized nationally and internationally. Professor Yancy’s interviews are scheduled to appear in a single volume under contract with Oxford University Press, which will consist of 33 interviews of philosophers on race (2016). His article, "Walking While Black in the White Gaze" in The New York Times) won the American Philosophical Association Committee on Public Philosophy's Op-Ed Contest in 2014. When at Duquesne, he twice won the Duquesne University McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship. His most recent edited book is entitled, White Self-Criticality, Beyond Anti-Racism: How Does it Feel to be a White Problem? (2015). He is currently working on 3 edited books and two authored books. Professor Yancy is also "Philosophy of Race" Book Series Editor at Lexington Books.

Helena Hansen, M.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at NYU Medical Center, and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology. Dr. Hansen is also a documentary film- maker. Her most recent film is “Managing the Fix,” a documentary on race, class, and addiction pharmaceuticals. The film follows three people in New York City as they go on and off of opioid medications (methadone and Suboxone) and navigate the fragmented public addiction treatment system, raising questions about the ontological and pragmatic implications of treating opiate addiction with long term opioid maintenance. Using interviews with addiction researchers, policymakers, pharmaceutical executives and historians, as well as archival footage, the film reconstructs the historical enmeshment of addiction pharmaceuticals with racial politics and the War on Drugs.

Colum McCann is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. His most recent collection, "Thirteen Ways of Looking" has received rave international reviews, including a Pushcart Prize and selection in the Best American Short Stories of 2015. In her review, The New York Times critic Sarah Lyall praised the author: “Mr. McCann is a writer of power and subtlety and beauty best known for his National Book Award-winning novel “Let the Great World Spin,” which took a large cast of disparate characters in New York City in the 1970s and beyond, plunged the reader headlong into their messy, troubled, often quietly heroic lives and then showed how they all fit together. At the March 2016 Narrative Medicine Rounds event, McCann will talk about writing and his work as co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organization, Narrative 4. The writer, who was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, has been the recipient of many international honors, including the National Book Award, the International Dublin Impac Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. He teaches at the MFA program in Hunter College.

In her new book, “The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman's Life,” noted social worker Ann Burack-Weiss, PhD, LCSW, draws on the late-life writing of authors like Maya Angelou, Colette, Joan Didion, Doris Lessing and Adrienne Rich for inspirational and practical guidance as she navigates aging. The longtime social work practitioner, consultant and educator who has taught at the Columbia School of Social Work and is now an associate faculty member at Columbia's Program in Narrative Medicine will talk about her research and revelations while writing this book, which “speaks to pain, illness, reflection, and even suicide,” notes Miami University gerontology professor Kate de Medeiros. “Given her experience as a researcher…,her perspective is particularly well-informed.”

What is beauty? It’s a question fashion photographer Rick Guidotti often asked himself during the many years he worked for clients such as Yves Saint Laurent, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar. In a moment of serendipity, Guidotti walked by a young woman with Albinism (a genetic condition that results in loss of pigmentation) at a New York City bus stop, and wondered why she wasn’t considered beautiful in his other world. This exploration resulted in a Life feature of young women with Albinism smiling out from under the headline “Redefining Beauty.” It was a watershed moment for magazines as well as for the photographer, who has spent the past fifteen years working to transform societal attitudes towards individuals living with genetic difference. Guidotti, who founded Positive Exposure, an organization which utilizes the visual arts to significantly impact the fields of genetics, mental health and human rights, will speak about the work his group does and the many important ways it has guided the conversation about the richness and beauty of human diversity. For more about the group, go to http://positiveexposure.org/

Over the past decade Esopus has held true to its mission to “feature content from all creative disciplines presented in an unmediated format,” and in its most recent issue, the magazine explored the intersection between the world of medicine and the world of art by showcasing work by artists, physicians, poets, phlebotomists, musicians, dentists and nurses, among others. This program brings together Esopus editor Tod Lippy, who will talk about putting together Esopus 22: Medicine, as well as contributors Ian Williams (Bad Doctor) and MK Czerwiec: Comic Nurse (co-author of Graphic Medicine Manifesto), and Danielle Spencer and Stephanie Adler Yuan, who collaborated on “Critical Conversations,” a paper which offers a depiction of a health-care experience from multiple perspectives. The event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Program in Narrative Medicine and the Penn State University Press.

In his presentation, “All About Family Life: Living with Disability,” Akhil Sharma kicks off our monthly Narrative Medicine rounds for Fall 2015. He will talk about writing his most recent book, Family Life, which won the 2015 Folio Prize and was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014. Sonali Deraniyagala called it “deeply unnerving and gorgeously tender at its core,” adding “Family Life gives us beautiful, heart-stopping scenes where love in [a] family finds air and ease.” Sharma’s previous novel, An Obedient Father, won the 2001 Pen Hemingway Prize. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic and have been widely anthologized. He lives in New York City.

May 6, 2015 - Susan Ball, M.D., Author Assistant Director of the Bernbaum Unit, Center for Special Studies at New York Presbyterian Hospital Author of Voices in the Band: A Doctor, Her Patients, and How the Outlook on AIDS Care Changed from Doomed to Hopeful (http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Band-Patients-Outlook-Politics/dp/0801453623/) Voices in the Band is discussed in New York Times Article, A World Shared With H.I.V. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/health/a-world-shared-with-hiv.html) Dr. Ball has taken care of patients with HIV and AIDS at the Center for Special Studies at New York Presbyterian Hospital for over twenty years. She is the Assistant Director of the clinic and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University as well as Associate Professor of Public Health. Dr. Ball completed her undergraduate degree at Dartmouth and her medical degree at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. After completion of her Residency in Medicine at Upstate Medical Center she came to New York and completed a Masters in Public Health at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Ball joined the faculty at Cornell in 1992 and has worked as clinician, teacher and author as an HIV specialist since that time. In 2011 she completed a Master’s of Science degree in Narrative Medicine at Columbia and with the support of an NIH grant she has been working toward enhancing the curriculum at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Ball has written and spoken on HIV-related topics and also teaches, facilitates and advises courses and projects having to do with Narrative Medicine and Reflective Practice at the medical school. Her book, “Voices in the Band: A doctor, her patients and how AIDS care changed from doomed to hopeful” is published by the Cornell University Press.

April 8, 2015 - Cheryl Mattingly, Educator Professor of Anthropology & Occupational Science and Therapy Acted Stories: Narrative Form and the Clinical Encounter Cheryl Mattingly, Ph.D., is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and the Division of Occupational Science and Therapy, University of Southern California. She is currently a Dale T. Mortensen Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Aarhus University. Her primary research and theoretical interests include narrative, moral reasoning and experience, phenomenology, the culture of biomedicine, chronic illness and disability, the ethics of care, and health disparities in the United States. She received the Polgar Essay Prize for "In Search for the Good: Narrative Reasoning in Clinical Practice" from the Society for Medical Anthropology, American Anthropological Association. She has also written six books. She received the Victor Turner Prize (American Anthropological Association) for Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots (1998) and the Stirling Book Prize (Society for Psychological Anthropology) for The Paradox of Hope: Journey Through a Clinical Borderland (2010). Her other books include: Clinical Reasoning in a Therapeutic Practice (1994); Narrative, Self and the Social Practice (2009), co-edited with Uffe Jensen; and Moral Laboratories: Family Peril and the Struggle for a Good Life (2014).

The Season of Migration The lyrically told story of one of the world's greatest artists finding his true calling. Nellie Hermann, M.F.A. is Creative Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She is a graduate of Brown University and the M.F.A. program at Columbia. Her first novel, The Cure for Grief(Scribner: 2008), received acclaim in such publications as Time Magazine, Elle, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and others, and was chosen as a Target "Breakout" book. Her non-fiction has appeared in an anthology about siblings, Freud’s Blindspot (Free Press: 2010), as well as in Academic Medicine. Over the last eight years she has taught fiction and narrative medicine to undergraduates, medical students, graduate students, and clinicians of all sorts, and has given conference addresses in Iowa, California, Seoul, Korea, and elsewhere. Her second novel, The Season of Migration, a fictional exploration of the early life of Vincent van Gogh, will be published on January 6th by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Leslie Jamison is the author of The Empathy Exams, a New York Times bestselling essay collection, and a novel, The Gin Closet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, Oxford American, A Public Space, Boston Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, and the New York Times, where she is a regular columnist for the Sunday Book Review. She was raised in Los Angeles and currently resides in Brooklyn. Will Boast is the author of a memoir, Epilogue, recently published by Norton, and a story collection, Power Ballads, which won the 2011 Iowa Short Fiction Award. He’s held fellowships from Stanford University and the University of East Anglia and his fiction and essays have appeared in Best New American Voices, Virginia Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, The American Scholar, and The New York Times, among other publications. He currently divides his time between Brooklyn and Chicago, where he teaches at the University of Chicago.