Aparna Alankar is an MD student at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Alankar, who graduated from NYU in 2019 with a BA in Biology and English and American Literature, wrote and edited for Washington Square News and the Medical Dialogue Review, two student-led publications at NYU. She later created her own student-led publication, Caduceus, to provide a platform for premedical students. Alankar, who is passionate about the study of humanities and its intersections with medicine, carries this passion into medical school as a part of Arbor Vitae/The RWJMS Literary Society during her preclinical years, helping to create a distinction program in Medical Humanities.

Kristen Anderson is a second-year medical student at McMaster University who is currently enjoying the waterfalls in Ontario, Canada. She has a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Anderson is passionate about literature and hopes to combine her love for reading with her medical pursuits.

Naazia Azhar, MD, MBA, grew up in New York City and attended Union College and Albany Medical College in Albany, NY. She completed her training in Adult Psychiatry at Washington University in St Louis. Azhar, who specializes in addiction and works as an outpatient and inpatient psychiatrist, believes in the healing power of writing the words down and challenges herself to do this often.

Krista Bangs is a third-year medical student at McGovern Medical School with a strong interest in health and writing, particularly within the realms of health equity and healthcare innovation. Her current research focuses on the integration of medical-legal partnerships into pediatric primary care clinics in Houston. She also loves connecting with others outside of medicine by biking, running and attending the Houston Ballet.

Cathy Beres describes herself as a "late bloomer," having received an MA in Creative Writing (nonfiction concentration) from Northwestern University at the age of 64. Beres' work has been published in journals including The Sun, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Passager, Ruminate (Finalist, Nonfiction), The Examined Life Journal, Fish Anthology, Cork Ireland (Finalist, Short Memoir), and others. She retired from a 35-year-career in advertising and marketing, and resides with her partner, Tony, and their two Golden Retrievers, Zeus and Scout, in Evanston, Illinois.

Jenny Burkholder is a writer, teacher, and breast cancer advocate living and working in Pennsylvania. Formerly the Montgomery County Poet Laureate, Burkholder is the author of the poetry chapbook Repaired (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in North American Review, So to Speak, 2River View, The Healing Muse, and The Maine Review, among others. She is the co-host of the podcast OVERexpressed & OUT, which amplifies the voices of Philadelphia-area, modern-day pioneers–women transforming their communities from the inside.

Holly Cantley became a patient advocate through the experience of her daughter being a cancer patient for almost a decade. Her seventeen-year career in medical professional liability claims allowed her to find a unique way to use her interest in science and medicine and to deeply consider the variables that impact patient care and the work of physicians and medical staff. The intersection of professional and personal has caused Cantley to view the interests of patient and provider as inextricably linked, believing that good medicine benefits all, whichever side of the bed rail you find yourself on. Cantley, who has a degree in Biological Science and Biotechnology, is married with three daughters, one who will forever be 18.

Colleen Cavanaugh, MD has taken care of women in Rhode Island in her Gynecology practice for over thirty years. Before returning to R.I. to attend Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Cavanaugh performed ballet and modern dance in NYC professionally. Her initial BA degree was in Art History from Wheaton College. She continues to integrate her clinical experience and lifelong artistic calling in her writing. Cavanaugh resides in Rhode Island with her husband, her dog and two cats.

Danielle Chammas, M.D., is a palliative care physician and psychiatrist who works in the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Symptom Management Clinic. She completed her medical school, general adult psychiatry residency, chief resident year, and hospice and palliative medicine fellowship at UCSF. In addition to providing clinical care, her professional and scholarly interests include medical humanities, the psychological and existential dimensions of life-limiting illness, the intersection of psychiatry and palliative care, therapeutic communication, medical education and clinician wellness.

Farah Contractor (she/her), originally from Philadelphia, is currently a fourth-year medical student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. At UVA, she is also a Hook Scholar in the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics where she uses creative writing to bring awareness to disability rights, planetary health, and the patient perspective as a pediatric cancer survivor herself. She is applying to psychiatry residency with the plan to specialize in child and adolescent psychiatry.

Melissa Cummins is a third-year medical student at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. Her work reflects upon the values of clinicians, defining moments in patient care and her career, and her personal experiences with infertility and loss. Cummins seeks to bridge the gap between patients and providers, and to use the written word as a means of integrating the beauties of science and art. In so doing, she hopes to use the power of narrative medicine to present a raw, unfiltered reflection on the highs and lows of the practice of medicine as well as the pursuit of wellness.

Fiona Dunbar is a pediatric occupational therapist at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland, where she uses play to foster recovery and rehabilitation in the acute-care setting. Before becoming an OT, she was an environmental educator, gardener and landscape designer, and is curious about the intersections between the human body and the natural world.

Jenny Eleanor is a pediatrician mom writing and reading about the intersection of motherhood and doctoring. She is working on essays about navigating the duality of being a pediatrician and having a son with a complicated medical illness. She also likes thinking about the complexity of human relationships, and making some meaning and art out of our messy and transient time here on earth.

Stephanie Francalancia is a medical illustrator and medical student at Brown University Alpert Medical School. She has a deep-rooted interest in incorporating patient narratives into their health care to better meet their goals, reinforced when she received her M.S. in narrative medicine from Columbia University in 2022. She also holds a B.A. in fine arts from the University of Michigan, which established much of her digital media practice. She envisions continuing to braid visual art, patient narratives and clinical care together in her future medical practice.
STUDIO ART: Portraits of Resilience

Cammie Copps Fuller is a poet and owner of an indie bookshop, The Open Book, in Warrenton, Virginia. Fuller has published multiple poems in Taproot and Poets Reading the News and she has a children's book releasing in September 2025. Fuller leads writing groups through her shop with the intention of building community and encouraging expression through the written word.

Megan Gerber is a primary care physician, professor of medicine and assistant dean of health humanities at Albany Medical College and a candidate in the Columbia University narrative medicine certification of professional achievement program. Her clinical and academic work focuses on improving both health outcomes and the health care experience for those who have experienced trauma. For the last several years, she has worked to find novel ways to integrate narrative medicine into her work. Gerber is an abstract painter whose paintings and mixed-media pieces focus on textural expression of “emotional landscape.” Her visual and written work has appeared in the Journal of General Medicine, Closler.org, Pulse Voices and Intima. She is the editor of the book “Trauma-Informed Healthcare Approaches: A Guide for Primary Care.”

Ricardo González-Rothi, an academic physician and writer, has had his fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry featured in the U.S. and the U.K., in Acentos Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Lunch Ticket, The Bellingham Review, Litro and others. His memoir The Mango Chronicle was published by Running Wild Press in 2024. Born and raised in Cuba, he came to the United States as a refugee in his teens. gonzalezrothiauthor.com

Moshe Gordon is a first-year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Liddy Grantland (she/her) is a queer disabled writer and care worker from South Carolina. She shared time as a direct support professional and team leader at L’Arche, Greater Washington, D.C.: an intentional community of Medicaid-funded group homes for folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She provides practical support to those seeking abortions as a full-spectrum doula, clinic escort and community educator. She is in the process of a Master of Social Work program and, as of January 2025, lives with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. Her work about bodies as people can be found in her book, Flesh and Bones: Learning to Love This Body, and on her Substack at OurBodiesOurselves.substack.com.

Jenna Grauman is a collage artist and graduate student at Antioch University, studying the intersections of narrative medicine and social justice in healthcare and community building. Grauman completed her BA at Antioch University with a concentration in narrative medicine, creativity and healing. Grauman, who was a resident in chaplaincy and an ICU liaison at a level one trauma center, also served as a transplant donor coordinator. She is passionate about humanizing medicine, storytelling, visual art and spiritual activism. Post degree, Grauman hopes to work with the full spectrum of care from med students to caregivers.

Janet Greenhut is a preventive medicine physician in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is co-founder of Narrative Dimensions, a nonprofit devoted to promoting the patient's lived experience, and co-creator of the Living Well with Illness workshop, which is based on the philosophy of phenomenology. She is co-author of The Wholeness Handbook: Care of Body, Mind, and Spirit for Optimal Health.

Nivedita Gunturi is an academic geriatric medicine and palliative care physician in Chicago, Illinois. She has a particular interest in the intersection of narrative medicine education, encouraging emotional and intellectual vulnerability between educator and learner, and a rejuvenation of the human connection during the clinical encounter. Her work as fellowship program director at Rush University Geriatric Medicine incorporates these themes, encouraging a transformative experience for her learners.

Tracy Harris is a writer living in St. Paul, Minnesota. In recent years, Harris has been working on her bucket list, including reading War and Peace, riding the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls, and learning to play Rhapsody in Blue on the Piano, medical impairments and lack of talent notwithstanding. Her essays have been published in The Common, Nowhere, Lunch Ticket and Tahima Literary Review, and more.

Mallika Iyer is a special educator and researcher, writer, and recovery advocate in Boston. She holds a BA from Johns Hopkins and an Ed.M. from Harvard. A recipient of the Fulbright fellowship, she writes about healing, spirituality and justice. Her work has appeared in Tiny Buddha, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Please See Me, Spirituality+Health and Braided Way. Iyer has experience as both a healthcare worker and chronic illness patient, and has published peer-reviewed research on risk factors for cannabis use and ADHD among children.

Anjali Jaiman MD, PhD, is a family medicine doctor in Rhode Island.

Tyler Jorgensen, MD is an assistant professor of internal medicine at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin where he practices and teaches palliative medicine. In his academic work he seeks novel ways to integrate music into clinical encounters and physician well-being efforts. Jorgensen's creative writing has appeared in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, the Journal of General Internal Medicine, and Examined Life Journal. His narrative and interview podcast, My Medical Mixtape, can be found on Spotify; his "Crash Cart Campfire" musings are on Substack.

Elly Katz was working towards a doctorate at Harvard at 27 when she went for a mundane procedure to stabilize her neck. Somehow, she survived the resulting brainstem stroke caused by the physician’s needle misplacement. In the wake of this, she discovered the power of poetics. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Stardust Review, the Sacramento Literary Review, the Amsterdam Review, and many others. Her first collection of creative nonfiction, From Scientist to Stroke Survivor: Life Redacted is forthcoming from Lived Places (2025). Her first collection of poetry, Instructions for Selling-Off Grief, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (2025). ellykatz.com

Sue Kenney has been teaching for over 20 years, first at the college level at William Paterson University, and for the past 17 years at Immaculate Heart Academy. Kenney's doctorate is in interdisciplinary humanities, and she earned her CPA in Narrative Medicine from Columbia in 2021. In addition to teaching English and Social Studies, she is happily in her second year of teaching narrative medicine to high school students.

Hope Kramer is a third-year resident in internal medicine who has had significant experience with the trauma of witnessing and engaging in her patient's worst days. She processes her experiences of brokenness and humanity through art as a way to stay grounded.

Chloe Nazra Lee, MD, MPH, is a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. Her professional interests include narrative medicine, trauma disorders and working with survivors of domestic abuse. Her writing has appeared in MedPage Today, Doximity, Ms. Magazine, Women's Media Center and The Baltimore Sun.

Amanda Le Rougetel retired from college teaching to be a writer and community educator; she lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her focus is short-form creative non-fiction essays, 50-word stories, and 100-word micro-memoirs. She facilitates learning in community classrooms about how writing can be a tool for transformation in our lives. Personal agency and autonomy are themes that inform her teaching and show up in her writing. Her work has been published, among other places, in Brevity magazine, on Brevity blog, and in the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.

Nicole Mazzarella has published an award-winning novel This Heavy Silence and short stories in publications such as Antioch Review and Cimarron Review. She lives outside Chicago where she teaches creative writing and is working on her second novel.

Ankit Mehta is a hospitalist with HealthPartners and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He has a keen interest in the intersection of arts, humanities and medicine. He is passionate about graphic medicine as a powerful tool in medical education to teach self-reflection and empathy with accessibility and poignancy. His graphic works have been published in various journals, magazines and publications like the Los Angeles Times. His graphic story was part of an Emmy-winning documentary “Speaking About Race” and shortlisted for the 2024 International Graphic Medicine Award.

Susan Schuerman Murphy is an attorney who defended healthcare providers when they were sued in Texas. The author has published medical jurisprudence articles and a book. Now she prefers to write creatively. The author lives near Ann Arbor, MI.

Woods Nash teaches health humanities at the University of Houston College of Medicine. He works at the intersection of narrative medicine, ethics, literary studies and creative writing.

Clare Olivares is a California painter and poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her creative work has been published in literary and art journals including The Plentitudes, Tulip Tree Publishing, Star82 Review, Remington Review, Juste Milieu, kerning/a space for words and Fatal Flaw. Olivares' writing reflects daily observations of living with gratitude and curiosity. She holds an undergraduate degree in art history/medieval studies from UC Berkeley and a master's degree in painting from Mills College, Oakland, CA.

R.A. Pavoldi is self-trained and credits the Napolitano American dialect and school of hard knocks for his voices. He’s grateful to have published in The Hudson Review, North American Review, FIELD, Cold Mountain Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Crab Orchard Review, Hanging Loose, Tar River Poetry, Ars Medica (twice), Italian Americana, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, Viewless Wings podcast, Sky Island Journal, Atlanta Review, Slipstream, I-70 Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Subnivean and others.

Sarah Piper is a writer and physician living in Northern California. She is a graduate of the Contemplative Medicine Fellowship through the NY Zen Center and is certified in the practice of Narrative Medicine through the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative. Her previous work has appeared in Intima ("Mavis Staples Says to Write About My Blessings," Spring 2024) and Yellow Arrow Journal.

Avina Rami is a fourth-year medical student at Harvard living in Boston, Massachusetts. She loves going on long runs, discovering new local bakeries, and stopping to meet every dog she comes across.

Willa Schneberg is a poet, ceramic sculptor and curator. "The Naked Room," her latest, (2023) and sixth poetry collection, is a true synthesis of her life as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice, and as a poet. Among her honors: the Oregon Book Award in Poetry, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award, Second Place in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Kathmandu, Nepal and Glasgow, Scotland, and poems on the Writer’s Almanac. Her poetry has been translated into Hebrew, Arabic, Nepali and Korean. She presented the online workshop “Developing Empathy Through Writing the Persona Poem” for the NW Narrative Medicine Community of Practice. This year, a poem in The Poeming Pigeon has been nominated for a Pushcart.

EG Shields is an Appalachian-born writer and graphic memoirist. Based in Brooklyn, she can usually be found daydreaming about the mountains and looking for green spaces. A graduate of the New School's MFA program, her work has been featured in the Reader's Write section of The Sun magazine, The Rumpus, Arkana Literary Magazine, and Barely South Review.

Miki Simic is a first-generation American, college graduate and outdoor enthusiast residing in Ohio. Although she works as a nurse during the day, her passions include writing, painting, photography and sewing. She enjoys spending free time observing the elements, finding inspiration in the patterns that nature provides and allowing it to guide projects. Founder of the blog “The Mint Needle,” an artsy escape from the medical field, she created a colorful world where some of her accomplishments can be noted. Simic's work has been published by Moonstone Arts Center, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Tiny Seeds Literary Journal, In Parentheses, Poets Choice and the Great Lakes Review.

Caroline P. Slater grew up in New England, raising her own family among the staggering vistas of the Champlain Valley in northern Vermont. Slater enjoys writing that captures the healing beauty of nature and relies on all four seasons, wise horses, and a perennial garden of heirlooms to stay grounded as an RN, mother, and wife. @cslatervt

Meg Sniderman lives in East Tennessee and works as a nurse practitioner for people living with HIV. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Nursing and the Journal for Nurse Practitioners. Sniderman spends her free time hiking, cooking and tending her chickens and pigs.

Danica Snyder is a high school junior from Tucson, Arizona. Beginning with a Chiari diagnosis and brain decompression surgery at two years old, a rare atlas assimilation that required cervical spinal fusion at three and a complicated revision surgery at nine, all accompanied with the comorbidities of Ehlers Danlos, she has known the painful fragility of life. Her determination to focus on the beautiful and possible is often the theme of her work. She is planning to attend a liberal arts university on the East Coast and hopes to continue making art at the intersection of medical narrative and hope.

Angela Tang-Tan is a fourth-year medical student at Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 2020 with a dual degree in neurobiology and psychology before becoming an ambulance EMT during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is pursuing a residency in neurosurgery. Tang-Tan’s poems, “Code OB" and "Pediatric Hemicraniectomy," appear in the Spring 2024 Intima. Her Field Notes essay "Top Surgery” and artwork “White Coat Ceremony” appear in the Fall 2024 Intima.

Laura Vater is a writer, medical oncologist and TEDx and commencement speaker in Indianapolis. She is a member of the Pegasus Physician Writers at Stanford, and her narrative writing has been featured in medical journals and Anna Quindlen’s book Write for Your Life. Her essay "Papaya" appeared in the Fall 2021 Intima. Read more at lauravater.com.

Ernest Wang works as a cancer research coordinator in Boston, MA. A graduate of Binghamton University, Wang studied neuroscience and philosophy. An aspiring physician, Wang enjoys spending time with friends, playing the piano, learning the guitar, and taking up photography in his spare time.

Audrey T. Williams, MFA, is an emerging Black American poet with Burmese heritage whose work explores relentless resilience, ancestry, and speculative literature. As the founder of AncestralFutures.org and an organizing force in the Black Speculative Arts Movement's Oakland chapter, she bridges community wellness with cultural narrative preservation through "Words for Wellness" programs. Her writing, published in "Space & Time Magazine," "Conjuring Worlds: An Afrofuturist Textbook," "Peregrine Journal," "Lightspeed Magazine" and more, explores themes of self-nurturing, new motherhood and the anticipatory grief of eldercare. Williams, who serves as Co-chair for the 2026 World Fantasy Convention, actively contributes to the San Francisco Bay Area's literary landscape through her curation work with Bay Area literary festivals such as LitQuake and Beast Crawl, as well as local bookstore events.

Emily Xiao is a second-year internal medicine resident at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She was taught by her late grandfather how to paint as a young child, and throughout her career has developed a passion for using art to illustrate the ethical and emotional challenges experienced by patients and providers in medicine. Her work has been featured in BCM Omentum and was the recipient of the award for best visual arts piece. She blends magical realism and Impressionism to explore the intersections between medicine and the human experience.

Sarah Yang is a third-year medical student at University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. She has always enjoyed drawing as a hobby since childhood, but her experience taking art history courses at Middlebury College transformed her perception of art as a powerful tool of education, meaning-making, and communication. She takes inspiration from her everyday life and hopes to incorporate art in her career as a physician.

Megan Young is an academic interested in the intersections of art and science, particularly in the field of health and chronic illness. She utilizes creative techniques in her research as a narrative tool to bring depth and evocative connection to her work; she believes they are an important way to promote both understanding and epistemic justice for the lived experience of chronic illness and the hidden stories that may be difficult to share.

Katherine Zippel is a general practitioner, researcher and breast cancer survivor with a deep commitment to narrative medicine and social prescribing. She is pursuing a doctorate in philosophy in evidence-based health care at Oxford University, where her research explores the role of general practitioners in breast cancer care and the impact of social prescribing on survivorship. Zippel is also studying for a professional certificate in narrative medicine at Columbia University. Her clinical work has spanned rural, remote and Aboriginal health settings in Australia, where she integrates lifestyle medicine and community-based interventions into patient care. She is passionate about the intersections of medicine, storytelling and human experience, using narrative to bridge the gap between clinical care and the lived realities of patients.