Creative Writing Workshops

We’re happy to announce that creative writing workshops for faculty will continue to be offered next semester! The workshop series will explore the act of writing and will cover issues of craft—narrative, perspective, point of view, imagery and dialogue. This series will also discuss how writing and reading can open up unexpected storylines, outcomes, possibilities, and develop a deeper understanding of ourselves, our colleagues and patients in a clinical context. No writing experience is necessary!

Register below.

Art & Medicine: Sudden Cardiac Art

Date: Wednesday, 01/15/2025

Time: 12pm - 1pm

Location: Mayer Auditorium

Join us for a thought-provoking lecture with Bethany and Hannah Keime, founders of Heart Charged, an organization that provides support for young people with chronic cardiac illness and builds awareness on it.

The Sudden Cardiac Art exhibit feature work from patient-artists facing cardiac arrest from both U.S. and Europe. 

Lunch & Learn: Jonathan Chou

Poetry Reading

Date: Thursday, 01/16/2025

Time: 12pm - 1pm

Location: Hoyt Gallery (basement of KAM)

Keck School of Medicine alumnus, MIT psychiatrist, and lecturer in the Narrative Medicine Program, Jonathan Chou, is also an accomplished poet. His debut poetry collection, Resemblance/與, won the 2023 Alma Book Award and is now on bookshelves. Resemblance/與is a spare, lyrical, and beautiful refraction of memory while exploring the 228 Incident of 1947 and White Terror period in Taiwan’s history. Chou’s collection understands that memory isn’t about remembering, but about standing in place as Browning once said of the lyric poet, who “digs where he stands.” Resemblance/與 seems to say, “Finally we stopped looking/for a way out,” instead preferring to unravel in place.

The HEAL program is an integrating feature across all four years of the KSOM curriculum and prepares students to care for patients as complete human beings, not as injuries or illnesses: HEAL offers over 200 hours of curricular content, and builds skills in perspective-taking, critical reflection, and ethical decision-making. It progresses from the personal to the professional, beginning with students’ examination of their own values and person ethics, and moves toward the critical examination of the physician’s role in society. 

HEAL content and skills are delivered in required pre-clinical and clinical coursework, as well as in a rich array of co-curricular elements including creative writing workshops, art and medicine events, free piano lessons, concerts, and lectures by scholars from the humanities and social sciences. The HEAL Program trains compassionate future physicians while providing them with opportunities that nurture and support their overall wellbeing.