Writing the Body: Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare
Writing the Body — part of BLR’s Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare series — brings together four best-selling authors whose work confronts illness as it is lived in the body.
Through patient-authored memoirs, this event explores how writers translate pain, diagnosis, treatment, and medical encounters into compelling narrative. These authors will discuss how writing helps reclaim agency in the face of illness, challenges the limits of medical language, and transforms bodily vulnerability into story—inviting readers to better understand what it means to inhabit a changed body.
This event is free and open to the public.
This is a live event, but please RSVP even if you can’t make it, as the discussion will be recorded and we will send you a link to watch later.
You may also be interested in “Mapping the Mind,” the next event in the Conversations in Creative Writing in Healthcare series.
About the Panelists
Porochista Khakpour is the author of the novels Sons & Other Flammable Objects, The Last Illusion, and Tehrangeles, as well as the memoir Sick and the essay collection Brown Album. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Bookforum, Elle, and others. She has been awarded fellowships from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, Northwestern University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, MacDowell, Civitella Ranieri, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The Ucross Foundation. porochistakhakpour.com
Meghan O’Rourke is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the best-selling memoir The Long Goodbye. Her most recent book of poems, Sun In Days, was named a Top Ten Poetry Book of the Year by the New York Times; her debut Halflife was a finalist for Britain’s Forward First Book Prize. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Whiting Nonfiction Award, and a Front Page award, she is a professor of creative writing at Yale University and the executive editor of The Yale Review. www.meghanorourke.com
Rebekah Taussig is an author, educator, and disability advocate, best known for her award-winning memoir Sitting Pretty. She holds a Ph.D. in creative nonfiction and disability studies, teaches and consults widely, and is a screenwriter on the upcoming Apple Original Films’ Being Heumann, directed by Oscar winner Siân Heder. www.rebekahtaussig.com
About the 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.