Please note that this is an online workshop conducted via Zoom. Participants will be provided information on how to join the online sessions once they complete the registration process.
As Daniel Defoe prefaces his riveting A Journal of the Plague Year, “I have set this particular down so fully…to those who come after me, if they come to be brought to the same distress, and to the same manner of making their choice.” Three hundred years later, his account of the bubonic plague in London remains a poignant reflection of a public health crisis.
This interdisciplinary writing workshop pulls together artistic and scientific disciplines to explore healing, health, and humanism. We will address thorny issues one faces as clinicians and patients. Topics may include death and dying; disease; gender, sexuality, and reproduction; disability; mental health; activism; and racial and ethnic health disparities.
At a time when routines are upended, this workshop carves out time to process clinical and cultural events through poetry, short stories, and memoir. We’ll appreciate narrative as an invaluable diagnostic and therapeutic tool. Participants will identify techniques to improve expressive and persuasive writing. By reading diverse accounts, we’ll access new reserves of empathy and cross-cultural competence. Readings will include work by Atul Gawande, Mary Roach, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as The Bellevue Literary Review, based in Bellevue Hospital in New York. Participants are not limited to health professionals – any interest with the body is welcome.