Crafting a Story of Illness: Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare
Watch Crafting a Story of Illness, which brought together four best-selling authors whose work spans the worlds of literature and healthcare for a rich conversation on writing about the body, illness, and healing. These acclaimed storytellers—who write from perspectives as clinicians, patients, caregivers, and observers—explored how narrative can hold complexity, seek meaning from suffering, and create space for empathy and connection. Panelists discussed their own paths to the page, as well as the challenges and choices that come with writing about vulnerable experiences.
Topics included how to structure a narrative of illness, the ethics of writing about illness, challenges of technical jargon, and the balance between raw experience and refined craft. The conversation imparted practical wisdom, creative guidance, and an invitation to find language for what so often feels unspeakable.
This event is presented with generous support from Northwell Health.
Panelists
Rana Awdish, MD is the bestselling author of In Shock, a landmark medical memoir. She is the Medical Director of Care Experience at Henry Ford Health and pulmonary physician. She was named Schwartz Center’s National Compassionate Caregiver in 2017 and a U.S. News & World Report Healthcare Hero. She is recognized as a leading voice on healing and has written for the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Harvard Business Review, and the Washington Post. She has been featured on NPR, BBC, and CNN.
Theresa Brown, PhD, RN, is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, as well as the award-winning Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient, an exploration of her breast cancer treatment in the context of her work as an oncology nurse. She is currently at work on a new book: Four Nurses: How I Found Hope in Health Care. Brown has written extensively for the New York Times and also for CNN.com and the American Journal of Nursing. She has a PhD in English but left academia to become a nurse, a career change she has never regretted.
Sandeep Jauhar, MD, PhD, has written several bestselling books, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. My Father’s Brain, his latest, is a memoir of his relationship with his father as he succumbed to dementia. It was named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, and was a Smithsonian top ten science book of 2023. Jauhar writes regularly for the opinion section of the New York Times and a cardiologist at Northwell Health.
Moderator
Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, is the editor-in-chief of BLR. In her day job, she is a primary care doctor at Bellevue Hospital and a clinical professor of medicine at NYU. She is a contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Times and The Atlantic, and is a recent Guggenheim fellow. She is the author of six books, most recently When We Do Harm.