November Narrative Medicine Rounds with Binnie Kirshenbaum

For our November rounds, we have the honor of hosting Binnie Kirshenbaum, the author of one story collection and eight novels, including Rabbits for Food (2019), a darkly comic depiction of a clinically depressed woman and her subsequent breakdown and, Counting Backwards (2025), which chronicles the lives of a middle-aged woman and her husband who is suffering from early-onset Lewy body dementia.

Counting Backwards begins with hallucinations. From their living room window, Leo sees a man on stilts, an acting troupe, a pair of swans paddling on the Manhattan streets below. Then he’s unable to perform simple tasks and experiences a host of other erratic disturbances, none of which his doctors can explain. Leo, 53, a research scientist, and Addie, a collage artist, have a loving and happy marriage. They’d planned on many more years of work and travel, dinner with friends, quiet evenings at home with the cat. But as Leo’s periods of lucidity become rarer, those dreams fall away, and Addie finds herself less and less able to cope with an increasingly unbearable present.

Eventually, Leo is diagnosed with early onset dementia in the form of Lewy body disease. Life expectancy ranges from 3 to 20 years. A decidedly uncharacteristic act of violence makes it clear that he cannot live at home. He moves first to an assisted living facility and then to a small apartment with a caretaker, where, over time, he descends into full cognitive decline. Addie’s agony, anger, and guilt result in self-imposed isolation, which mirrors Leo’s diminished life. And so for years, all she can do is watch him die—too soon, and yet not soon enough.

Kirshenbaum's novels have been selected as Notable and Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and NPR, among others. Her work has been translated into eleven languages. She is a Professor of Fiction at Columbia University School of the Arts.  

Carlie Hoffman is the author of three poetry collections, including One More World Like This World (Four Way Books, 2025), a Library Journal “Title to Watch,” and When There Was Light (2023), winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She is also the translator from German of Blütenlese by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (World Poetry Books, 2026) and the forthcoming essential poems of Rose Ausländer. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day program, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Slowdown, among others. Hoffmanis the founding editor of Orange Editions/Small Orange Journal and has taught at Columbia University, NYU, and SUNY Purchase. Her honors include a “Discovery”/Boston Review prize, a Poets & Writers Amy Award, and fellowships from the Goethe-Institut, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Columbia University, Convent Arts, and Yetzirah.

Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds held on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year, hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Rounds are supported by live captioning. If you have any other accessibility needs or concerns, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 212-854-2388 or disability@columbia.edu at least 10 days in advance of the event. We do our best to arrange accommodations received after this deadline but cannot guarantee them. A recording of our Virtual Narrative Medicine rounds is available following the live session on the Narrative Medicine YouTube channel, and you can watch other recent Rounds events there.