Joshua M. Hauser is an Associate Professor of Medicine & Medical Education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Section Chief of Palliative Care at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago. He works with students, colleagues and patients using poetry as means to connect with each other and care for each other.
Linda W. Li is a third-year medical student and Armstrong Humanities Scholar at Duke University School of Medicine, who plans to apply into psychiatry and combined internal medicine/psychiatry. She received her B.S. degree from Emory University in 2019, with a double major in biology and English/creative writing. Her first introduction to narrative medicine was through an undergraduate class, and since then, she has been captivated by the idea of writing to share the many stories she has encountered in medicine. Now at Duke, she is a champion of medical humanities education at medical schools, and she serves as a co-Editor-in-Chief of VOICES, DukeMed’s premier literary journal. Her own art and writing have been featured in literary journals, and she hopes to continue pursuing her love for art and writing in ways that will remind others of the humanity within medicine.
Olga Lucia Torres has been sick her entire life: starting with a pediatric pituitary adenoma, later developing lupus and five other autoimmune diseases, then experiencing a devastating brain injury that left her disabled. As a first-generation Latina, she was one of the eight founding attorneys of the Bronx Defenders, and is now a lecturer in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University. Olga is also a patient advocate and as the New York State Advocacy Chairperson for the Lupus Foundation of America. Additionally, she’s the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association, an organization that seeks to increase diversity across all platforms of media. She’s been published in the New York Times, Parents Magazine, and other publications about what it’s like to live and parent in New York City as a person with disabilities and with all her medical conditions. Olga attended Cornell University and Georgetown University Law Center on scholarship and went back to school as an adult to Columbia University. Olga’s book is currently being auctioned for sale.
