Michael Arnold is a Canton, Ohio native who is currently a second-year medical student at OUHCOM. He became enamored by the power of narrative medicine shortly after joining The Open Book Project on the Cleveland campus of his medical school. The radical vulnerability fundamental to putting his truths on paper has provided him with an invaluable emotional outlet while he navigates the medical field. In the future, Arnold is interested in exploring the intersection of preventative family medicine, public health and social justice.

Elisabeth Abeson, a recent graduate of the Ayurvedic Institute, takes an integrative approach to treating her sero-positive erosive Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and is in remission thanks to classical Ayurveda & Allopathic Medicine. Her intention is to leverage her background in “cross-sector partnership building for sustainable development” at the United Nations (UN), Multinational Corporations (MNC) & Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) to establish lines of dialogue between sectors of society. Core to her personal mission is working in solidarity with marginalized communities including those who are suffering from illness on the level of body, mind and spirit. She is setting up a practice to offer Ayurvedic Health Counseling & Integrative Health Coaching to those with Rheumatoid Arthritis.

Hope Atlas has been putting pen to paper since the age of fifteen. Writing is her lifeline and her voice. She writes her story through poetry, quotes and memoirs. She has a master’s degree in Reading Education from Syracuse University and has worked with children through adults. For many years Atlas worked as a Bereavement volunteer. Most recently she has devoted her time as a caregiver to her aging loved ones. She has been published in the online journals, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Moon and Highland Park Poetry.

Ashwini Bhasi is a poet and visual artist from Kerala, India. Trained as a Bioinformatics analyst, she is interested in exploring the poetics of the human genome, its central dogma and the epigenetics of shame, trauma and chronic pain. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO, Room Magazine, Dunes Review, Rogue Agent, The Feminist Wire and Driftwood. She is the winner of the William J. Shaw Memorial Poetry Prize from Dunes Review and was a finalist for the 2018 Rita Dove Poetry Award. She is also a Tin House Summer workshop alumnus and the recipient of the Voices of Color fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.

Rachel Conrad Bracken is Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Northeast Ohio Medical University. She received her PhD in literature from Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she was affiliated with the Centers for Critical and Cultural Theory and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. As a scholar of US literature and the health humanities, Bracken explores the intersections of literature and public health at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as contemporary speculative fiction, medical technology, and the rhetoric surrounding pediatric vaccination. Bracken’s research appears or is forthcoming in English Language Notes (ELN), Public: Art | Culture | Ideas, Big Data and Society, Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities, and the collection Transforming Contagion: Risky Contacts among Bodies, Disciplines, and Nations (Rutgers UP, 2018).

Dwayne Brenna is the award-winning author of several books of poetry and fiction. His two books of poetry, Stealing Home and Give My Love to Rose, were published by Hagios Press in 2012 and 2015 respectively. Stealing Home, a poetic celebration of the game of baseball, was subsequently shortlisted for several Saskatchewan Book Awards, including the University of Regina Book of the Year Award. His first novel New Albion was published by Coteau Books in autumn 2016. New Albion won the 2017 Muslims for Peace and Justice Fiction Award at the Saskatchewan Book Awards. It is one of three English language novels shortlisted for the prestigious MM Bennetts Award for historical fiction. His short stories and poems have been published in an array of journals.

Ryan Brewster is a fourth-year medical student at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His piece explores the fleeting moments of calm before a surgical procedure. The figure lies on the OR table, bathed in light with arms splayed out like the crucifixion. This image evokes an almost religious scene and it reminds us—the patient is sacred.

Joseph Burns is a Resident in Pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York in New Hyde Park, NY. Burns, a native of Orlando, Florida and an alumnus of Stetson University, is a 2019 graduate of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University in Miami. He is passionate about the arts and community engagement; his interests include congenital heart disease and American Indian Health. He hopes to pursue a career in pediatric cardiology

Albert Howard Carter, III, is faculty affiliate, Trent Center, Duke University. He has worked in the literature and medicine/health area for over 30 years. His latest book is In Peril: All People, All Life, Our Earth; In Prospect: Better Healthcare and Medicine (UCMedicalHumanitiesPress.com). Others include Clowns and Jokers Can Heal Us: Comedy and Medicine; Our Human Hearts: A Medical and Cultural Journey, and First Cut: A Season in the Human Anatomy Lab. Carter, who taught literature at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Fla., for many years, has been a pastoral care volunteer in an ER/Trauma Center also a licensed massage therapist and certified Qigong healer working with cancer patients. He and his wife now live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

William Cass has had over 190 short stories accepted for publication in a variety of literary magazines such as december, Briar Cliff Review, and Zone 3. Recently, he was a finalist in short fiction and novella competitions at Glimmer Train and Black Hill Press, received a couple of Pushcart nominations, and won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal. He lives in San Diego, California.

Charlotte Crowder lives and writes on the coast of Maine. An accredited editor by the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences with a master’s degree in public health, she is a medical writer by day. Publications in which her short stories have appeared include among others American Writers Review, Maine Boats, Homes and Harbors, The Maine Review, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. Forthcoming are short stories in Dirigo Dreams Anthology (City View Press, Fall 2019) and Anthology 2, Dreamers Creative Writing (Winter 2020). Her first picture book, A Fine Orange Bucket, was released by North Country Press in June 2019.

Tim Cunningham has been an actor, clown, nurse and assistant professor. Currently he is a nurse administrator for Emory Healthcare. The lessons Cunningham learned while working with people infected by Ebola virus continue to inform his current practice while also haunting him when he reflects on the global disparities of health. @timcunninghamrn www.agoodkite.com

Jane Desmond is a poet and scholar who writes about the intersections between veterinary medicine and human medicine, as well as our relations with non-human animals. A Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she also holds an affiliate faculty appointment at the College of Veterinary Medicine, and is the author of several academic books, including Displaying Death and Animating Life (U. of Chicago Press, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in Persimmon Tree in the U.S. and in Words for the Wild in the U.K.

Nancy Dimsdale lives in San Diego. Her poems have been published in Magee Park Poets Anthology, A Year in Ink Anthology, San Diego Poetry Annual, Paterson Literary Review, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.

Rossana Di Renzo, educator and trainer, lives and works in Bologna. Di Renzo was the former coordinator of placements for health profession trainees and contact person of the relationship with the Universities at the Bologna AUSL (Public Health Services). Her interest has always been narrative and applied narrative medicine, which she uses in different fields: in training courses for health professionals, in the degree course in Nursing at the University of Bologna and in research. She currently collaborates to introduce narrative medicine for research in collaboration with Associations of people with chronic diseases. Recently, as external expert, she concluded the research for “The audacity of fragility: Patients with Spinal Cord Injury caregivers and professionals meet each other through narrative medicine” at Montecatone Rehabilitation Institute of Imola.

Minna Dubin is a writer, public artist, and performer in the Bay Area. She writes essays, monologues, and lists about growing up, identity, and motherhood. Minna’s writing has been published in The New York Times, Parents Magazine, MUTHA Magazine, the Forward, Akashic Books’ Terrible Tuesdays, and various literary magazines and anthologies. Her literary public art has been on exhibition at the San Francisco Public Library, The Museum of Motherhood, and The Mom Egg Review. She is the recipient of an artist enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and has received writing residencies at InCahoots, the Kentucky Foundation for Women’s Hopscotch House, and Lacawac Sanctuary and Biological Field Station in the Pocono Mountains.

Andrea Eisenberg is an OB/GYN in the Metro Detroit area. Through her years in practice, she has shared in countless stories of joy, sadness, resilience, and hope. She has found story-telling has helped to enrich her experiences with her patients. She has been published in Intima, The Examined Life, and Pulse, the Voice of the Heart of Medicine. In addition, she has begun a narrative medicine program with the ob/gyn residents at Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital. She blogs at www.secretlifeofobgyn.com and has been a guest blogger on KevinMD and Doximity.

Laura English posts a blog called Eat More Life (https://eatmorelife.weebly.com), a healing space for women living with anorexia. On Sunday afternoons, she teaches writing to people from all walks of life. A chapbook, Graves Too Small to Be Red (Finishing Line Press) was published last year. She lives in Lancaster County, PA, with her husband and four sons.

Lauren Fields is currently a third-year medical student at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She has been writing ever since she was little, and poetry has been an important part of her journey to, and through, medical school. Her poems have been published in Blackberry: a magazine, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, WATER Literary and Arts Magazine, Reflexions Literary and Fine Arts Journal of CUIMC, and The Morningside Monocle of Columbia Law School.

Lauren Gambill, MD MPA is a pediatrician who practices hospital medicine in Austin, Texas. She is a passionate advocate for equity in healthcare. She spends her time taking care of sick kids, fighting for better health policy, writing, and wrangling an opinionated toddler. Find her on Twitter @renkate.

Katy Giebenhain is the author of Sharps Cabaret (Mercer University Press). She is part of the monthly Narrative Medicine group at WellSpan York Hospital in York, Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in The Healing Muse, The National Academy of Medicine's Expressions of Clinician Well-Being online gallery (Athena, Dialing), The Arkansas Review, The Glasgow Review of Books, The Examined Life and elsewhere. She co-hosts the coffeehouse poetry series "Upstairs at the Ragged Edge" and works at Carroll Community College. Her MPhil in creative writing is from University of South Wales.

Nancy Glass has had a long and satisfying career taking care of children, practicing—at various times—pediatric critical care medicine, pediatric anesthesia and pain medicine, and palliative care. Currently she works as a pediatric hospice physician at Houston Hospice. In 2015, Dr. Glass began the Master’s in Liberal Studies program at Rice University, with the goal of becoming a better writer so that she could tell her hospice stories. She is now working on a collection of these hospice stories.To deal with the emotional stresses and burdens of hospice care, Dr. Glass knits incessantly, enjoys bird photography, and listens to classical music.

Teddy G. Goetz (he/him or they/them) is a psychiatry resident at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to earning his MD at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, he studied biochemistry and gender studies at Yale, conducting research on a wide spectrum of biologically- and socially-determined aspects of gender-based health disparities, including earning his MS developing the first animal model of gender-affirming hormone therapy. His current focuses include mixed-methods research on LGBTQ mental health, as well as narrative medicine and physician advocacy. More about his scholarly and artistic work can be found at teddygoetz.com.

Sarah Gurley-Green, PhD, is a professor at Salem State University, researches, a writer, and a researcher in a variety of health and illness subjects. gurleygreen.com.

Usman Hameedi is a Pakistani-American scientist and poet. Since 2008, he has competed in and coached for collegiate, national, and international level poetry slams. Most recently, he was ranked 15th at the 2019 Individual World Poetry Slam and was invited to open the Final Stage Slam. He has been featured on Upworthy, Huffington Post, and the Story Collider: Storytelling for Scientists podcast. In addition to his spoken word background, Hameedi has contributed to academic and industry laboratories with an array of research focuses, including protein crystallography, mitochondrial dynamics, cancer cell metabolism, and drug discovery. Of all the things he has done, he is most proud of inspiring others to dream big and see the greatness within themselves!

Sarah Holdren graduated from Elon University in 2018 with a degree in anthropology and public health. After graduation, she spent a year in Finland as a Fulbright U.S. Student Grantee conducting qualitative research in the neonatal intensive care unit. Her time spent talking with American and Finnish mothers of preterm infants serves as the inspiration for much of her writing. She is now a student and National Science Foundation graduate research fellow at Columbia University in the Narrative Medicine program, and aspires to become a physician-scholar practicing at the intersection of the sciences and the humanities.

Teya Kamel is a nurse educator and yoga instructor at Carlow University in Pittsburgh. As an artist, she values self-expression through a variety of methods as a way of exploring emotions associated with being a health care provider and cancer survivor. About Self Portrait 1 The Reveal (acrylic paint), Kamel writes: “Intoxicated by chemotherapy and transformed through radical surgery; stripped bare, vanity vanished. Scanning lifestyle and environment as opportunity for renewal; a tabula rasa.”

Padmavathi Karri, known as V, is a student at McGovern Medical School. She is currently on a research and service focused gap year between her third and fourth year of medical school. V has a background in social work and is curious about many things including how social justice interweaves itself into medicine and how race and gender influence perception and health care. This curiosity sometimes manifests as literary scribbling and dialogue with others.

Emily Kerlin studied Creative Writing while attending Antioch College. She has been teaching the difference between “chicken” and “kitchen” to English Language Learners in public schools for the last 10 years. She lives in Urbana, Illinois with her husband, four teenagers and a geriatric brown dog.

Laurie Kutchins has three published books of poetry including The Night Path which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in poetry and received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award from BOA Editions. Her poetry and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals including The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and Orion. The essay appearing in Intima is excerpted from a completed memoir “Let the Dark River Pass,” currently seeking a publisher. She teaches creative writing at James Madison University.

Tina La Porta is an artist diagnosed with Schizophrenia. She was introduced to art therapy during a stay in the hospital while living in New York City. Since then her artwork has focused on how she interprets her mental illness. Ms. La Porta’s use of medications revolve around her grappling with their side effects, “Pills are like wallpaper-- they cover up the symptoms but they are not a cure.” says La Porta. “For me, they completely replace psychotherapy.” In addition to her visual art, Ms. La Porta has also made a series of sound works based on her experiences of hearing voices.

Shanda McManus is a family medicine physician with an interest in narrative medicine. She believes that knowing our stories and our patient’s stories make us better doctors and people. Dr. McManus is currently a student at Project Write Now in Red Bank, NJ where she is working on a memoir. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and five children.

Chase Everett McMurren, MD, is a queer, Métis physician with an interest in supporting healthy living and dying. He is the physician lead for the home visiting program at Taddle Creek Family Health Team where he provides care-at-home for long-living elders who are homebound due to their infirmities. Dr. McMurren, an assessor and clinical supervisor for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and a Lecturer in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, is also a psychotherapist and the medical director of the Al and Malka Green Artists’ Health Centre at Toronto Western Hospital. With a focus on nourishment, Dr. McMurren is currently studying music thanatology (playing the harp as a mode of healing), and training as a Medicine Man.

Thomas Mampalam is a neurosurgeon in private practice in Northern California. Dr. Mampalam writes poetry informed by his medical, immigration, and family experiences. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the journal Neurology, The Healing Muse, The Avalon Literary Review, California Quarterly, and The Cortland Review.

Justin Millan is a writer and registered nurse working in long-term acute care in New England.

Victoria Millard writes essays, humor and poetry, and is working on a memoir about her life as a stage and hospital clown. Her writing has appeared in Humor Times and Sow's Ear Poetry Review. Forthcoming in Halfway Down the Stairs is her article about placing second in the Ladies’ Chicken Calling Contest at the Iowa State Fair. Victoria lives in Seattle with her psychiatrist husband, and is proud to be the silliest mother and grandmother on the planet.

Trisha K. Paul, MD is a resident physician in pediatrics who aspires to be a pediatric oncologist and palliative care physician. “Stroppy Sevens” is a story she shared at the first annual metro-wide Story Slam, a live storytelling event for residents/fellows in Minneapolis, MN. She is an Intima editor passionate about narrative medicine, ethics, dancing barefoot, and anything made of cork.

Michele Parker Randall is the author of Museum of Everyday Life (Kelsay Books 2015). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Stetson University.

Brian Ascalon Roley is a writer and professor. His books include American Son: A Novel (W.W. Norton), which was a Los Angeles Times Best Book, New York Times Notable Book, Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize Finalist, and winner of the Association for Asian American Studies Prose Book Award, among other honors, and has been taught widely. His fiction, literary essays and poetry have appeared in numerous journals and in anthologies published by Norton, Penguin and elsewhere, including several bestselling books in the Philippines. His collection, The Last Mistress of Jose Rizal (Northwestern University Press) appeared in April 2016. Roley has received fellowships and awards from the University of Cambridge, Cornell University, the Ohio Arts Council, Djerassi, Ragdale, and the VCCA. He is currently Professor of English at Miami University of Ohio. More info at www.brianroley.com

Ariel Scott is a family medicine physician at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine where she practices as a hospitalist, primary care physician, and specialty care physician for adults with intellectual and developmental disability. She was involved in the Columbia Narrative Medicine Online Certificate Program and co-teaches a Writing & Healing elective for 4th year medical students as well as reflective writing course for pre-med students. She was involved in the Columbia Narrative Medicine Online Certificate Program and looks forward to furthering her own study of narrative medicine in the near future.​

Logan M. Shannon has a BFA in Studio Art with a minor in English from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Jewelry + Metalsmithing from Rhode Island School of Design. She is currently writing a memoir about her experience as a living liver donor and is generally trying to convince everyone she meets that the liver is, by far, the best organ. Shannon lives in New Hampshire with her husband, and their prolific sourdough starter, Seymour.

Elizabeth Soehl is a self-taught artist who uses art as a medium for expressing herself at her core. She has struggled with bipolar disorder since her teens, and her goal is to find ways of helping others who face mental illness. Soehl is empathetic, caring and always looking for a new way to "create."

Jennifer Stella is a writer and a doctor, as well as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Cameroon. She completed her MFA in poetry at Brooklyn College while in medical school in San Francisco and subsequent internal medicine residency in New York City. Writing has appeared in Omniverse, Calyx, Tupelo Quarterly, the Dusie Blog, Eleven Eleven, Der Grief, Pharos, and others. Two chapbooks of her writing have been published: Your Lapidarium Feels Wrought (2016, Ugly Duckling Presse) and Letters We're Allowed (2019, above/ground press). Stella was recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Doctors without Borders as an HIV/TB physician. She currently works in the TB clinic of the Department of Public Health in San Francisco.

Greg Stidham is a retired pediatric intensivist (ICU physician) currently living in Kingston, Ontario, with his wife Pam and their two foundling "canine kids." Stidham’s passion for medicine has yielded in retirement to his other lifelong passions—literature and creative writing.

Amanda Finegold Swain is a family medicine physician who has worked in student health at the University of Pennsylvania for over a decade. She finds inspiration for her writing in reflecting on her own years as a student, as well through the interactions with the challenging and fascinating students she treats. A native New Yorker whose parents both pursued creative careers, Amanda chose a decidedly alternate path in medicine. Happily, she has found plenty of creativity in medicine and that writing is a wonderful tool to understand both her own and her patients’ lives. She is also excited to be developing a humanities, arts and medicine curriculum at the Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

Eileen Valinoti, BSN, M.A. is retired after a varied career in oncology, nursing education and school nursing, Valinoti.is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in literary magazines such as Confrontation, in Parents and Glamour and The New York Times.

Marilena Vimercati lives and works in Milan. Vimercati is the former teacher of sociology, currently collaborates with Fondazione ISMU – Initiatives and Studies on Multiethnicity—an independent scientific body—to carry out projects focusing on interaction between migration processes and training paths. She has research skills in the social and educational field, in using narrative methodologies in the different contexts in which she worked/works (students’ and professionals’ placements in European countries, and currently with migrants). She is also involved in training for trainers focused on inclusion. Recently, as external expert, she concluded the research for“ The audacity of fragility: patients with Spinal Cord Injury caregivers and professionals meet each other through narrative medicine” at Montecatone Rehabilitation Institute of Imola.