Trent Humanities in Medicine Lecture

Anna DeForest headshotA History of Present Illness

Anna DeForest, MD

Palliative Care Physician and Novelist
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
New York City

Wednesday, January 25
12:00-1:00 pm
Duke Hospital Lecture Hall 2002

Palliative care physician and novelist Anna DeForest discusses the role of attention in clinical work, and ways of being present for the experience of others that allow us to find meaning and fulfillment in the face of great suffering, both physical and existential.

Anna DeForest, MD is the author of the novels A History of Present Illness and the forthcoming Our Long Marvelous Dying. Their fiction and essays on death and language have appeared in Harper's, the Paris Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and elsewhere. Dr. DeForest currently works in palliative care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Books will be available for signing following the talk.

Lecture Hall 2002 is one floor directly above the main lobby of Duke Hospital. 

See a recording of the event.

A History of Present Illness by Anna Deforest book cover