Healing Words

It is remarkable how many physicians have produced great works of fiction and poetry—from Anton Checkhov and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author Vincent Lam. It leads one to wonder what links these seemingly disparate vocations. According to Austin Ratner (a first-year MFA student and graduate of Johns Hopkins medical school) and author of The Jump Artist (Bellevue Literary Press):
"They're both what are sometimes described as callings [...] ways of meaningfully addressing myself to human experience and suffering."

"If you take the heart of The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, the lungs from Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures and the brain of Liam Durcan’s Garcia’s Heart, you might end up with a body that resembles Nicholas Ruddock’s The Parabolist."— Clair Cameron, The Globe and Mail



On Sunday, May 29, physician/author Nicholas Ruddoch will join Johanna Skibsrud, Richard Greene, Sarah Selecky, Alison Pick and Cynthia Holz for an afternoon of readings. There's a good chance you will hear something from Mr. Ruddoch's novel The Parabolist.