October Narrative Medicine Rounds with Tom Sleigh

For our October Rounds, we are delighted to be joined by acclaimed poet Tom Sleigh. Tom Sleigh is a Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College and a journalist who has worked for the past decade in Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, and Libya. His many books include the 2023 Paterson Poetry Prize winner, The King’s Touch, House of Fact, House of Ruin, Station Zed, and Army Cats, all from Graywolf Press. His awards include a Guggenheim, two NEA grants, Kingsley Tufts Award, Shelley Memorial Award, and both the Updike Award and Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Threepenny, Poetry, and other magazines. His most recent book, Rosie: A Memoir of Farewell, was published by Unbound Edition Press in May 2026. The memoir is accompanied by a short film series by Ed Robbins, which features ten vignettes and four poem readings from the book. 

In Rosie: A Memoir of Farewell, Sleigh excavates the complex legacy of his mother Rosie — a brilliant English teacher who escaped dirt-poor Kansas through sheer intellectual force, only to struggle with the contradictions of motherhood and her own fierce independence.

From her white dog fur shroud to her final performance as she chose her own death at ninety-seven, Rosie emerges as both tender and terrifying, devoted and distant. Sleigh weaves together her own journal entries, family photographs, and his award-winning poetry to create a portrait that is simultaneously heartbreaking and darkly comic.

Rosie a book about words as weapons and balm, about the inheritance of trauma and brilliance, and about a son’s attempt to understand a mother who loved literature more than motherhood.

Tom Sleigh will be in conversation with Dr. Michael Nalepa, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. He received his medical degree from Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey where he also trained as a resident in Internal Medicine. He completed a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. Prior to studying medicine, Dr. Nalepa earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Psychology from Rice University, a Master’s Degree in Communication from Stanford University, and worked in publishing for several years. Dr. Nalepa’s interests include advance care planning; improving communication between patients, families, and medical teams; medical ethics; and narrative medicine.

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.