I am one of the nonfiction editors for Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, a online literary magazine that grew out of Columbia's Narrative Medicine program. It has been my honor to read the nonfiction submissions over the past several editions.
The current issue of the journal was released this week and has a lot of great pieces! I am still getting through them, but let me point out a couple of places to start:
Fiction:
There's a Special on Car Washes - Rory O'Sullivan
I first read one of Dr. O'Sullivan's short stories last year. His is a family physician in Toronto whose literary website is here. He writes in powerful, compact prose, and I drew on a previous story he published in Intima entitled, "Country Doctor," to write a Crossroads blog post several months ago. This is a haunting, understated piece.
...you tried to catch the doctors who whisked in and out at odd hours like ghosts. After that, the late night calls had become sort of routine. He recognized now that he was being notified as a formality.
Non-fiction:
The Valleys Between Us - Sophia Gauthier
This essay is a first-person account of a clinical rotation at a children's hospital in Kenya that captures the anxiety and excitement of working far from home as a visiting physician on a humanitarian project. The writing is honest and reflects the fundamental contrast of working at home an in a low- and middle-income country.
Each page is dedicated to a single patient, like a headstone. The first paragraph is a summary of their hospital stay.
Field Notes:
Curveballs - Kaitlyn Reasoner
This evocative and hardworking essay by an infectious diseases fellow leans into a metaphor based on the positive air pressure of a stadium with an inflatable roof with the negative pressure of the ICU rooms occupied by COVID-19 patients.
Sometimes I worry that we’ll forget; that we have already forgotten. But it never was the physical spaces, was it? It was never the positive or the negative pressure. It was always the people that shared those spaces with us.
Poetry:
Changing the Bag - Paul Shovlin
This shares a poet's experience after a life-changing surgical procedure.
Everything is in balance, almost like before.
Studio Art:
Harmonic Helix - Anna Hostal
Medical student Anna Hostal offers what she say is "intended to explore the relationship between form and function in anatomy." Guess I am partial to head and neck structures.
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Fall 2024 issue of Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine - A Sampler
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