Presenters' Biographies

Marvin Bell, MPA, MFA

Marvin Bell was born in New York City on August 3, 1937, and grew up in Center Moriches, on the south shore of eastern Long Island. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Alfred University, a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. Bell’s debut collection of poems, Things We Dreamt We Died For, was published in 1966 by the Stone Wall Press, following two years of service in the U.S. Army. His following two collections were A Probable Volume of Dreams ( Atheneum, 1969), a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets; and Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See (1977), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Since then, Bell has published numerous books of prose and poetry, most recently 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book (Trinity University Press, 2009), a collaboration with six other poets, including Tomaz Salamun, Dean Young, and Christopher Merrill, and Mars Being Red (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) , which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Beginning in 2000, he served two terms as Iowa's first Poet Laureate. His other honors include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Poetry Review , fellowships from the Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts, and Senior Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia. Bell taught for forty years for the Iowa Writers' Workshop, retiring in 2005 as Flannery O'Connor Professor of Letters. For five years, he designed and led an annual Urban Teachers Workshop for America SCORES. Currently he serves on the faculty of Pacific University's low-residency MFA program. He has also taught at Goddard College, the University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and Portland State University.

Lan Samantha Chang, MPA, MFA

Lan Samantha Chang has served as director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop since 2006. She is the author of a collection of short fiction, Hunger (1998), and a novel, Inheritance (2004). Her work has been translated into nine languages and has been chosen twice for The Best American Short Stories. She has received creative writing fellowships from Stanford University, Princeton University, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also the recipient of a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Sayantani DasGupta, MD/MPH

Sayantani DasGupta is assistant professor of clinical pediatrics and core faculty in the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She teaches in the graduate programs in narrative medicine at Columbia and health advocacy at Sarah Lawrence College, and in the summer writing seminar "Writing the Medical Experience." She is on the editorial boards for Literature and Medicine and the weekly online magazine Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine.

Her academic work in medical humanities and narrative medicine has appeared in scholarly collections and been published in journals such as The Lancet, Pediatrics, Academic Medicine, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, Literature and Medicine and Journal of Medical Humanities. Her creative work has been published in collections from Creative Nonfiction and Kaplan and journals including JAMA, Hastings Center Report, and Literary Mama. She is the co-author of The Demon Slayers and Other Stories: Bengali Folktales, the author of Her Own Medicine: A Woman's Journey from Student to Doctor, and the co-editor of the award winning collection of women's illness narratives, Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write their Bodies. She is currently working on a collection of essays on motherhood and medicine, as well as a middle-grade children's novel.

Nick Flynn, MFA

Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (Norton, 2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and has been translated into thirteen languages. He is also the author of two books of poetry, Some Ether (Graywolf, 2000), which won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and Blind Huber (Graywolf, 2002). His newest book, a memoir entitled The Ticking is the Bomb: A Memoir of Bewilderment was released by Norton in 2009. He has been awarded fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Library of Congress, The Amy Lowell Trust, and The Fine Arts Work Center. Some of the venues his poems, essays and non-fiction have appeared in include The New Yorker, the Paris Review, National Public Radio’s “This American Life,” and The New York Times Book Review. He worked as a “field poet” and as an artistic collaborator on the film “Darwin’s Nightmare,” which was nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006. One semester a year, he teaches at the University of Houston and spends the rest of the year elsewhere.

David Gompper, MFA

David Gompper has lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, Texas and Iowa. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London. He received his doctorate at the University of Michigan, taught at the University of Texas, Arlington, and since 1991 has been Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa. In 2002 - 2003 Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2009 he received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City.

Gompper's compositions are heard throughout the United States and Europe. In 1999 his Transitus (for wind ensemble) premiered at Carnegie Hall, and a number of his works have premiered in London's Wigmore Hall, including: Homage a W. A. (William Albright) for piano; and Shades of Love, a song cycle on the poetry of Constantin Cavafy.

Subsequent returns to Moscow have included premieres and performances of Crossed, Music in the Glen, Six Love Poems, Star of the County Down, Butterfly Dance, Spirals and Ikon. His latest work for violin and piano, Ikon, was taken on a 14-concert tour throughout the US and Europe last fall with Wolfgang David, a violinist from Vienna with whom Gompper actively collaborates as a pianist and composer. They have recorded three CDs on the Albany and VDE-Gallo labels.

He recently completed several new compositions including a 28' song cycle called The Animals on poetry of Marvin Bell written for Stephen Swanson, and an organ work for Konstantin Volostnov. He is working on several new compositions including a piano trio and one for solo cello. His Violin Concerto and other orchestral works were recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London) in December 2009 for a release on Naxos in early 2011.

Stephen Swanson, MFA

Stephen Swanson is a concert and opera singer, a teacher of singing, and a stage director for opera. He earned degrees from North Park College and Northwestern University and served a two-year AGMA apprenticeship with the Wolf Trap Company. After an internship at the International Opera Studio of the Zurich Opera, Swanson sang in opera houses in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, amassing a repertoire of 91 roles in operas, operettas, and musicals. Since 1994, he has been Professor of Voice at The University of Iowa.

Swanson toured extensively in North America and Europe, singing the title role in Victor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis. This historical reconstruction of the original orchestration and vocal score was documented on a compact disc recording produced by Studio Matouš and ARBOS, Company for Music and Theater (Austria), MK022-2 631.

An extremely versatile performer, Swanson sings works from the Baroque to the avant-garde as well as standard baritone repertoire, such as Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and his signature piece, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.

Rebecca Bamford, PhD

The University of Minnesota Rochester

Rebecca Bamford holds a PhD in philosophy from Durham University. Before coming to UMR, she was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy at Rhodes University, a postdoctoral fellow at the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University, and she taught philosophy and interdisciplinary human studies at the Universities of Durham and Bradford, and Hunter College of the City University of New York. Bamford's research explores questions arising at the intersections between modern European philosophy, contemporary philosophical psychology, aesthetics, and literature. I have published articles on ethics and on the history of modern European philosophy, and I served as Assistant Editor of the Journal of Nietzsche Studies between 2007 and 2009.

Nancy K. Barry, PhD

Luther College

Nancy K. Barry is a writer, teacher, and breast cancer survivor who is Professor of English at Luther College, where she teaches courses on writing and women's literature. She is also a continuing faculty member for the University of Iowa's Summer Writing Festival, teaching workshops on creative nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in Iowa Woman, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun,

David Biro, MD, PhD

SUNY Health Science Center @ Brooklyn

BA, Classics, University of Pennsylvania 1986

MD, Columbia University 1991

PhD, English Literature, Oxford University 1995

Clinical Associate Professor of dermatology, SUNY Downstate Medical Center

Director, Medicine and Literature course, SUNY Downstate

Author, One Hundred Days: My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient (Pantheon, 2000)

Author, The language of Pain: Finding Words, Compassion, and Relief (Norton, january, 2010)

Ted Bowman, MDiv

University of Minnesota

Ted Bowman is a grief educator. He has also been a special instructor in family education at the University of Minnesota since 1981. Beginning in 2004, he has been an adjunct professor at the University of Saint Thomas School of Social Work. He was on the national board for the National Association for Poetry Therapy from 1993 until 2008. He presents annually in the UK and Ireland as well as to a wide range of groups in the United States.

Heide Bursch, RN, PhD(c)

The University of Iowa College of Nursing

Heide Bursch RN, MS is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Iowa College of Nursing and a John A. Hartford Foundation Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity pre-doctoral scholar. Heide has a long history of clinical nursing in the critical care setting at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics where she received Above-and-Beyond Awards from patients, peers, and students, a nomination for clinical excellence from the critical care division and in 2006, the "100 Best Iowa Nurses Award" from the Department of Nursing. Heide received a BSN from the University of Iowa College of Nursing in 1981 and an MSN in 2006. As a candidate in the PhD program in Aging Studies and Ethics she is currently working on a dissertation exploring symptom interpretation and communication of family caregivers for patients with advanced heart failure. In the course of her studies, Heide has co-authored two publications with Dr. Keela Herr on pain management in patients with dementia as well as updated the website state of the art review of tools for assessment of pain in nonverbal older adults. Heide is developing expertise in qualitative research methods with emphasis on phenomenology and the hermeneutic philosophy of Paul Ricoeur under the mentorship of Dr. Howard Butcher and David Klemm. She received the Stanley Award for International Travel to visit with experts in Sweden about both the development of a method and its application in the care of chronically ill and dying patients.

Howard Butcher, RN, PhD, PMHCNS-BC

The University of Iowa College of Nursing

Howard Butcher is currently an associate professor at the University of Iowa College of Nursing and is a former John A. Hartford Foundation Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity Post-doctoral Scholar. He earned an undergraduate degree in biology from Lebanon Valley College of Pennsylvania, a BSN from Thomas Jefferson University, a MScN in psychiatric/mental nursing from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in nursing science from the University of South Carolina. He has published over 70 journal articles and book chapters and is a co-editor of three books. He has presented over 100 papers at major international, national, and regional conferences. Howard's areas of research include the experience of Alzheimer disease family caregiving; testing written emotional expression as a meaning-making intervention for reducing depression, caregiver burden, and promoting health in family caregivers; and the identification and treatment of dispiritedness in later life. He completed a three year funded study from the National Institute of Nursing Research to test the effect of written emotional expression on caregiver burden outcomes in Alzheimer Disease family caregivers and has two current studies: one testing written emotional expression with a population of family caregivers of person with cancer; an another study testing the writing intervention over the internet with Alzheimer family caregivers. Howard also has expertise in teaching and conducting qualitative research methods including phenomenology and hermeneutics. He is certified as a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Adult Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing and use is skilled in using narrative approaches to psychotherapy. In 1996, he was awarded the University Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, and in 1998 and 1999 Howard was awarded the Rose and George Doval Award for Excellence in Nursing Education from New York University. This year he was awarded University of Iowa Collegiate Teaching Award.

Larry Cripe, MD

Indiana University Simon Cancer Center

Larry D. Cripe, MD, is a leukemia specialist and essayist. In addition to writing essays and poems published in JAMA and elsewhere, Dr. Cripe writes and reads Grace Notes, radio essays about end of life care aired on the nationally syndicated radio program Sound Medicine produced by WFYI 90.1 FM in Indianapolis. His research interests include physician-patient shared medical decision making near the end of life.

Mary Dowd, MA, MD

Clinical Services

Mary Dowd is a physician working in Portland, Maine. Her primary focus is treating addictions in the homeless population. She is a part-time clinical instructor at UVM and UMHS. She is co- founder of Our Town Poetry Series at Merrill Library and a member of the Transformational Language Arts Network. She has presented workshops at Goddard College in Narrative Medicine. Her poetry has been published in various journals, including the Atlanta Review, Permanente, and the Shambhala Sun Newsletter. She is part of a writers' collective giving readings at different venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Hanna Durand

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

Hanna has an extensive background in child psychology and development. Most recently, Hanna has expanded her knowledge of clinical research as a Research Coordinator in the Rheumatology Department of Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

Melissa Fischer, MD, EdD

University of Massachusetts Medical School

Dr. Fischer is an associate professor of internal medicine and the associate dean for undergraduate medical education at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She has focused her educational efforts on clinical teaching.

Colleen Fogarty, MD; MSc

University of Rochester Department of Family Medicine

Colleen Fogarty, an academic family physician teaching and practicing in a community health center in Western New York, has dabbled in poetry and prose most of her life. Medical school temporarily killed her creative muse. In the years since residency, she has published creative and empiric work in several journals and has received creative writing awards from the University of Rochester Cluster on Human Values in Healthcare and the Family Medicine Education Consortium. She discovered 55-word stories in 2006, and introduced the form to the Department of Family Medicine professional writing seminar. Dr. Fogarty has taught the form to faculty and residents, and has presented a 55-story workshop at the 2009 meeting of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine. She developed and edits the 55-word story column for the journal Families, Systems, and Health.

Joseph Gascho, MD

Pennsylvania State Milton S. Hershey College of Medicine

Training

• BA, Eastern Mennonite College, 1968
• MD, University of Virginia, 1973
• Residency, Medicine, University of Virginia, 1973-6
• Fellowship, Cardiology, University of Virginia, 1976-7
• Fellowship, University of Iowa, 1977-1980
• Faculty, University of Virginia, 1980-1986
• Faculty, Penn State Hershey, 1986-present
• Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology
• Director, Cardiology Fellowship Training Program
• 50+ scientific publication, book chapters
• Teaching, 2nd year medical school class, Ethics and Professionalism: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009

Permanent Photography Exhibit

• 2007 - Penn State Hershey Medical Center: Patient Portraits

Photography/Image Publications (national/international publications)

1. "Diagnosis Person" (Portraits of four patients, with medical condition captions and with forward). 24/7/365 International Journal of Healthcare and Humanities. I:1, 22-26, 2008.
2. Cover photograph Annals of Internal Medicine, 151: No 3, August 4, 2009.
3. "Echoes of a Doctor's Heart" (three echocardiographic images, each linked to a poem) Journal of Medical Humanities 30:201-205, 2009.
4. Three patient photographs accepted as cover photographs, Annals of Internal Medicine.

Poetry (national publications)

1. "One of Us". Canadian Medical Association Journal (accepted for publication.)
2. "My ICD". PACE (accepted for publication)

Heather-Lyn Haley, PhD

University of Massachusetts Medical School

Dr. Haley is an assistant professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is the research coordinator for the Center for Clinical Communication and Performance Outcomes.

David Hatem, MD

University of Massachusetts Medical School

Dr. Hatem is an Associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He directs the Physician, Patient, and Society Course, a clinical skills course for first and second year medical students. He will co-direct the Learning Communities that are being established and will begin in July 2010. He has presented nationally and internationally and has published on the use of narrative as a reflective tool in medical education. He also co-edits the Reflective Practice column that publishes narratives in the journal Patient Education and Counseling.

Dane Jacobson, medical student

University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine

Dane is a medical student at the University of Iowa. He did his undergraduate in biochemistry and ethics at the University of Northern Iowa. Before starting medical school, he never considered myself a writer. He's never been published and he's not very good, but at least now he tries.

Tom Janisse, MD, MBA

The Permanente Journal

Tom Janisse is the founding editor-in-chief of The Permanente Journal and founding publisher of The Permanente Press. During his nine years as Associate Medical Director of Northwest Permanente Medical Group in Portland, Oregon, he conducted relationship research with physicians with the highest patient satisfaction. He sponsors narrative medicine writing workshops for doctors and nurses and publishes their Quick Writes. His published medical writing includes a poem, "Dying Distant," in the New England Journal of Medicine, and a story, "Bring the Bottles," in the book Emergency Room: Lives Saved and Lost: Doctors Tell Their Stories.

Hilton Koppe, MB BS MFM FRACGP

North Coast GP Training

Dr Hilton Koppe is a general practitioner in Lennox Head, an east coast village in Australia, and Senior Medical Educator for North Coast GP Training. He has been involved in medical education as a GP Supervisor and Medical Educator since 1990. In 1997, Hilton started the Northern Rivers Division of General Practice Wellbeing project, the first of its kind in Australia. He is nationally recognized as being an innovative and inspirational teacher, with expertise in small-group learning and GP wellbeing. Hilton has recently developed programs exploring the interface of medicine and the humanities, with a particular focus on using creative writing to maintain enthusiasm and to prevent burnout in clinicians. He regularly presents this work around Australia, New Zealand and Europe. This is Hilton's first visit to North America. Outside work, Hilton is a passionate father, cook and member of Lennox Head Sharks over 35s premiership winning soccer team.

Timothy Koschmann, PhD

Southern Illinois University School of Medicine

Timothy Koschmann is a professor in SIU SOM's Department of Medical Education.

Michelle Latiolais, MA, MFA

University of California at Irvine

Michelle Latiolais is a professor of english at the University of California at Irvine.  She is the author of the novel Even Now which received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California.  Her second novel, A Proper Knowledge, was published in 2008 by Bellevue Literary Press.  She has published writing in three anthologies, Absolute Disaster, Women On The Edge: Writing From Los Angeles and Woof! Writers on Dogs.  Her stories and essays have appeared in Zyzzyva, The Antioch Review, Western Humanities Review and the Santa Monica Review.  Most recently she had work in issues of the Iowa Review and the Northwest Review.

Joe Letourneau, Medical Student

University of California, San Francisco

Joe Letourneau is a fourth-year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco. He is working on a year-long clinical and translational research fellowship under the tutelage of Dr. Mitchell Rosen at UCSF. Joe is currently studying the association between quality of life and access to counseling and treatment that can improve young cancer survivors' chances of parenthood.

Stephen Lovely, MFA

Iowa Young Writers' Studio

Stephen Lovely was born in Dallas, Texas and spent most of his childhood in Ohio. He attended Kenyon College, where he majored in English. After graduating from Kenyon he moved to Boston and spent two years working on the editorial staff of Cell. He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop from 1990-92 and studied with Deborah Eisenberg, Margot Livesey, Ethan Canin, and Frank Conroy. Stephen then worked for seven years as a night clerk in the pediatric intensive care unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He began writing Irreplaceable during this time. In 2005 Stephen became the director of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, a summer, residential creative writing program for high school students. Irreplaceable was published in February 2009 to widespread critical acclaim.

Jan Lucas-Grimm

Jan Lucas-Grimm is an actor and writer. Her soon to be published manuscript My Beautiful Leukemia chronicles her experience with acute leukemia.

Hilary Mosher, MFA MD

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics

Hilary Mosher is a second year resident in Internal Medicine and a published poet and essayist.

Ken Olson, MD

University of Minnesota

A family physician in practice for thirty years, Dr. Olson has pursued further education in doctor-patient communication in his retirement. He has taken the lead in organizing the significant event analysis for medical students at the University of Minnesota.

Frederic Platt, MA, MD

University of Colorado School of Medicine

Frederic Platt was a practicing general internist in Denver from 1970 to 1977. He retired from the care of patients in 1977 and now spends his time teaching and writing. He is Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine where he attends on the medical service and teaches in the Foundations of Doctoring Program. There he created a curriculum in Doctor-Patient communication, recruited and trained over 90 faculty, created roles for standardized patients, and teaches in small group format. He is the regional consultant for the Institute for Healthcare Communication headquarted in New Haven, CT. In that role he teaches communication workshops throughout the nation, trains and coaches fellow faculty, and produces video training material. He is the author of nine books, four on the subject of clinician-patient communication, the most recent being The Field Guide for the Difficult Patientt Interview, now available in its 2nd edition, 2004, by Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, and available in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean translations. He has published widely on this and other medical subjects. He is currently working on a collection of poems about retirement entitled Was a Doctor.

Fred Platt lives in Denver with his wife, Constance, and a Brittany Spaniel, Max. They have two grown daughters and two grandchildren and are avid bridge players and classical music afficionados.

Gregory Plemmons, MD, MFA

Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt

Dr. Plemmons graduated from Wofford College with undergraduate degrees in English and Biology. He received his MD from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston in 1992 and completed his pediatric residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 1995. He received his MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College in 2007. He has been Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital since 1998 and has led several creative writing workshops during their pediatric clerkship. His fiction has been published in Best New American Voices and the Yalobusha Review and he was the recipient of the Barry Hannah Award in Fiction in 2007. He is currently at work on a novel.

Rosalyn Plotzker, MD Candidate

Kisumu Medical Education Trust

Ms. Plotzker is passionate about equal access to health care and poetry. She worked in HIV prevention research at the University of Pennsylvania, New Orleans, as well as New York City. She currently is a medical student in New York.

David Power, MD

University of Minnesota Medical School

David Power is a family physician and associate professor in the Dept of Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He directs the family medicine clerkship at the Medical School and facilitates the significant event analysis.

Mitch Rosen, MD, HCLD

University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Mitch Rosen is a board certified fertility specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the Director of the UCSF Fertility Preservation Center, within the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Health.

Dan Shapiro, PhD

Pennsylvania State Milton S. Hershey College of Medicine

Dan Shapiro is chair and professor of Penn State College of Medicine's Humanities Department, and an Arnold P Gold Professor of Medical Humanism.

Barbara Shoup

Barbara Shoup is the author of six novels and co-author of two books on the creative process, an associate faculty member at IUPUI, and the Executive Director of the Writers' Center of Indiana. Her first novel, Night Watch, was praised by Lewis Thomas as

Yuko Taniguchi, M.F.A.

The University of Minnesota Rochester

Yuko Taniguchi was born in Yokohama, Japan. At the age of fifteen, she came to the United States and attended high school in Maryland. She earned her undergraduate degree at the College of St. Benedict/ St. John's University and her MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her first volume of poetry, Foreign Wife Elegy, was published by Coffee House Press in 2004. Her first novel, The Ocean in the Closet, was published by Coffee House Press in 2007. Some of her awards include the finalist for The Dayton Literary Peace Prize, 2008 Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, the 2007 Gustayus Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards Advancing Human Rights, and the McKnight Artist Fellowships for Writers.Taniguchi has been conducting creative writing workshops as a part of Creative Renewal Series Mayo Foundation's Cancer Center since 2004. Currently she is on the faculty at the Center for Learning Innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester.

Sheila Turken, MD

Elmhurst Hospital, Queens, New York, and Yonkers, New York

Sheila Turken is a board-certified endocrinologist. She is married to a neurologist who is the assistant dean for medical informatics at Einstein College of Medicine, and they have two children aged 18 and 20. In 2006, she was diagnosed with, and continue to be treated for, stage 3 breast cancer.

Timothy Twito, MD

Allina Medical Clinic

Timothy Twito is a practicing psychiatrist who lives and works in Northfield, Minnesota.

Kristen Underwood, MFA

ArtHaus

Kristen Underwood has been a theatre professional for the past twenty five years, working for companies across the country as an actor and director. She earned her BFA in theatre from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and her MFA in acting from San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre. Ms. Underwood's acclaimed work as a solo performer include Woman and Fiction: Virginia Woolf Speaks and Noel and Gertie minus Noel: An Evening with Gertrude Lawrence. She is a frequent guest artist at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where she founded Upstart Crow Theatreworks in 2002, and ArtHaus, a non-profit arts and education center she founded in 2008.

Marcia Valbracht, BS, MHA

University of Iowa Hygienic Lab

Marcia Valbracht has worked for over 25 years in the Newborn Screening Department of the University Hygienic Laboratory. She helped design and implement testing in these areas: Hemoglobinopathy, MS/MS (including PKU) and Cystic Fibrosis. She has coauthored articles on newly discovered hemoglobinopathies as well as the history of congenital hypothyroidism and phenylketonuria. Marcia has also developed children's learning materials on coping with sickle cell disease and phenylketonuria. Marcia has a B.S. in Science Education from Concordia University, Seward, NE and a Masters in Healthcare Administration from Des Moines University. A believer in lifelong learning, she has continued taking science and nursing classes and is a certified Facilitator with an emphasis on the adult learner and team effectiveness training.

Matthew Vanderloo, MS, medical student

University of Cincinnati College of Medicine

First-year medical student, author, and program founder Matt Vanderloo has seen the value of literature in medicine from many angles within the healthcare system. He has worked full-time in allied health, held various roles as a medical volunteer, and has spent the past several years in clinical research and as a graduate/medical student. Matt holds degrees from Marquette University (B.S. '05) and University of Cincinnati (M.S. Physiology '08); and is in his first year as a medical student at University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

Hedy Wald, PhD

Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

Hedy S. Wald is a clinical assistant professor of family medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University where she is a consultant in narrative medicine to the family medicine clerkship and conducts research on interactive reflective writing in medical education. She provides psychological consultation to rehabilitation hospitals and neuropsychological assessment for neurology outpatient practices. Her essays, poetry, and reviews have been published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Newsweek, Ars Medica, The Lancet, Family Medicine, and excerpted by The New York Times.

Dwight Watson, MFA

Wabash College

Dwight Watson is a playwright, director, and professor of theater at Wabash College. He has directed more that sixty productions and his plays have been produced at theaters around the United States. His work has been published in several books including his recent monologue collection entitled Original Monologs that Showcase your Talent (Allworth Press).

Larry Zaroff, MD, PhD

Stanford University

Following his residency and two years in the U.S. Army Surgical Research Unit, Larry Zaroff has had five careers. He focused for 29 years on cardiac surgery, including a stint as director of the cardiac surgical research laboratory at Harvard. There his work centered on the development of the demand pacemaker. He spent the next ten years concentrating on climbing and did a first ascent of Chulu West, a 22,000-foot peak on the Nepal-Tibet border. His third life has been at Stanford, where he received a PhD in 2000, and where he teaches courses in medical humanities. His fourth career has been as a writer, publishing in The New York Times science section, Pharos, Pulse, Atrium, The Hektoen International Journal, and others. He now works one day a week as a volunteer family doctor. He has received awards as the outstanding faculty advisor for the Human Biology program and in 2006 was honored as Stanford's Teacher of the Year.

Therese Zink, MD

University of Minnesota

Therese Zink is a family physician and professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota. She serves as a facilitator for the significant event analysis, and she assists students in writing up their experiences for deeper reflection and possible publication. Her research on domestic violence and rural health education has been published in a variety of medical journals. Her own self-relfective pieces have been published in both literary and medical journals, including JAMA. The Country Doctor Revisited, a 21st Century anothology about rural health care, will be published by Kent State University Press this fall. Several students' reflective stories are included in the collection.