Narrative Medicine Creative Prose Workshop

Call for Applications

Narrative Medicine StudioLab

Columbia’s Narrative Medicine StudioLab, sponsored by the Division of Narrative Medicine of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics, is a gathering place for faculty and students of CUIMC engaged in arts and humanities work. The StudioLab offers intensive workshops in poetry, fiction, medical journalism, memoir-writing, and photography and the opportunity for workshop participants to present their work to the entire StudioLab.

We are pleased to call for applications to our Fall, 2023 Narrative Medicine Creative Prose Workshop, which will be appropriate for any person working in fiction or creative non-fiction. This Workshop seeks applications from faculty, trainees, and students at CUIMC. *Please note that previous participants are welcome to apply again!* Faculty for the seminar will be Narrative Medicine’s Creative Director Nellie Hermann. She is the author of two novels, The Cure for Grief and The Season of Migration, as well as short fiction and creative prose and criticism. She has worked with Narrative Medicine teaching writing since 2004.

The Narrative Medicine Creative Prose Workshop is a small group workshop. We will select up to 10 participants for the workshop and hope to have a mix of disciplines and levels of training. The selection process will ask applicants for information about their past writing, hopes for future work, and a writing sample.

The group will meet virtually every two weeks for 90 minutes, most likely in the early evening. Each participant will have at least one turn to workshop their writing-in-progress. All participants will respond to the work during the seminar and in written reader’s comments. The workshop entails a three-month commitment, from October to December. Date/time of group meetings will be determined with those selected for the workshop.

Application Form

NARRATIVE MEDICINE CREATIVE PROSE WORKSHOP

APPLICATION FORM

 

 

Name:

 

Affiliation:

 

Email and phone:

 

 

Please answer the following questions in up to 200 words per answer:

 

1. Do you have creative writing experience? (If you have been published previously, please mention!)

 

2. Do you have a particular project you are aiming to work on during this workshop?

 

3. What/who do you like to read for pleasure?

 

4.  Please attach or copy in a writing sample of no more than 10 pages.

 

E-mail this completed application with writing sample to:

Rita Charon rac5@cumc.columbia.edu & Nellie Hermann ngh2101@columbia.edu 

Please call 212-305-4942 for questions

 

 

Faculty

  • Nellie Hermann, MFA

    • Lecturer; Creative Director, CUIMC Division of Narrative Medicine

    Nellie Hermann, recipient of a 2016 NEA literature fellowship, is a co-author of Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017). Her first novel, The Cure for Grief (Scribner, 2008), received national acclaim and was chosen as a Target “Breakout” book. Her short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Five Fingers Review, and Blunderbuss, and her nonfiction has appeared in an anthology about siblings, Freud’s Blind Spot (Free Press, 2010), The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Academic Medicine. Her second novel, The Season of Migration, about the early life of Vincent van Gogh (FSG: 2015), was an Editors' Choice by The New York Times.