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Narrative Medicine fortifies clinical practice with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness.

The Clearing:

"...the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of the path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place." ~ Toni Morrison (Beloved)

Narrative Medicine fortifies clinical practice with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness. Through narrative training, the Program in Narrative Medicine helps physicians, nurses, social workers, mental health professionals, chaplains, social workers, academics, and all those interested in the intersection between narrative and medicine improve the effectiveness of care by developing these skills with patients and colleagues. Our research and outreach missions are conceptualizing, evaluating, and spear-heading these ideas and practices nationally and internationally.

10/13/2026

Join us tomorrow, October 14 at 6PM EDT for our October Narrative medicine Rounds. This month we are delighted to welcome acclaimed poet and journalist Tom Sleigh, Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College.

Sleigh is the author of numerous books, including the 2023 Paterson Poetry Prize winner The King’s Touch, and the newly published Rosie: A Memoir of Farewell (Unbound Edition Press, 2026). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and the Shelley Memorial Award.

In Rosie, Sleigh explores the complex legacy of his mother—a brilliant English teacher whose fierce independence often collided with the demands of motherhood. Weaving together her journals, family photographs, and poetry, Sleigh creates a portrait of family, memory, trauma, and the complicated bonds between parent and child.

Sleigh will be in conversation with Dr. Michael Nalepa, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia and Medical Co-Director of Columbia’s Palliative Care Admit Team. A palliative care physician with a background in literature and publishing, Dr. Nalepa’s interests include narrative medicine, medical ethics, communication, and end-of-life care.

Join us for a conversation at the intersection of poetry, medicine, memory, and mortality.

Details and Registration: https://bit.ly/4jMoA6W

10/12/2026

Registration for our fall workshop closes this Friday, October 16.

This is your last week to join us for Embodiment and Attention: Narrative Medicine Fundamentals, October 23–25, 2026 in New York City.

Join Columbia faculty and our global community of practitioners for a transformative weekend of learning, attention, and connection.

Our in-person workshop happens once a year.

🔗 Details and registration: https://bit.ly/Fall26Workshop

10/09/2026

Join us next Wednesday, October 14 at 6PM EDT for October Narrative Medicine Rounds. This month, we are delighted to welcome acclaimed poet and journalist Tom Sleigh, Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College.

Sleigh is the author of numerous books, including the 2023 Paterson Poetry Prize winner The King’s Touch, and the newly published Rosie: A Memoir of Farewell (Unbound Edition Press, 2026). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and the Shelley Memorial Award.

In Rosie, Sleigh explores the complex legacy of his mother—a brilliant English teacher whose fierce independence often collided with the demands of motherhood. Weaving together her journals, family photographs, and poetry, Sleigh creates a portrait of family, memory, trauma, and the complicated bonds between parent and child.

Sleigh will be in conversation with Dr. Michael Nalepa, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia and Medical Co-Director of Columbia’s Palliative Care Admit Team. A palliative care physician with a background in literature and publishing, Dr. Nalepa’s interests include narrative medicine, medical ethics, communication, and end-of-life care.

Join us for a conversation at the intersection of poetry, medicine, memory, and mortality.

🔗 Register: https://www.mhe.cuimc.columbia.edu/narrative-medicine/public-programming-and-events/narrative-medicine-rounds/october-narrative-medicine-rounds-tom-sleigh

10/06/2026

As AI reshapes clinical practice, creativity has never mattered more.

Yet creativity is often sidelined, treated as secondary to clinical efficacy rather than integral to it. What would it look like to recognize creativity as a core component of clinical practice?

Today, we’re thrilled to open registration for Creativity as Essential Clinical Capacity, the first in our new series of Columbia Narrative Medicine Short Courses.

Led by Annie Robinson, MS, this five-week online course will explore the intersection of creativity, narrative medicine, and clinical practice. Through readings, discussion, and writing, participants will engage creativity and reflection as foundational capacities for clinical care.

Together, we’ll consider what gets lost when creativity is undervalued in healthcare—and what becomes possible when creative practice is recognized as integral to clinical education, care, and our own lives.

Creativity as Essential Clinical Capacity
November 5–December 10, 2026
Thursdays, 6–8 PM EST

8 of 12 spots remain. Reserve your seat:
bit.ly/CreativeCapacity

10/05/2026

For two decades, Columbia Narrative Medicine has hosted weekend workshops, introducing this work to clinicians, writers, artists, and scholars from around the world.

And after nearly every workshop, attendees tell us the same thing: We want to keep learning.

For those who want to continue engaging with Narrative Medicine, but aren't yet able to make the commitment of a certificate or degree program, we've created something new.

This fall, we're introducing Columbia Narrative Medicine Short Courses: focused, multi-week online courses offering sustained opportunities to learn, practice, and engage more deeply with Narrative Medicine.

Enrollment for our first course opens tomorrow. We can't wait to share it with you.

09/23/2026

For our October Rounds, we are delighted to welcome acclaimed poet and journalist Tom Sleigh, Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College.

Sleigh is the author of numerous books, including the 2023 Paterson Poetry Prize winner The King’s Touch, and the newly published Rosie: A Memoir of Farewell (Unbound Edition Press, 2026). His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and the Shelley Memorial Award.

In Rosie, Sleigh explores the complex legacy of his mother—a brilliant English teacher whose fierce independence often collided with the demands of motherhood. Weaving together her journals, family photographs, and poetry, Sleigh creates a portrait of family, memory, trauma, and the complicated bonds between parent and child.

Sleigh will be in conversation with Dr. Michael Nalepa, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia and Medical Co-Director of Columbia’s Palliative Care Admit Team. A palliative care physician with a background in literature and publishing, Dr. Nalepa’s interests include narrative medicine, medical ethics, communication, and end-of-life care.

Join us for a conversation at the intersection of poetry, medicine, memory, and mortality.

Registration: https://www.mhe.cuimc.columbia.edu/narrative-medicine/public-programming-and-events/narrative-medicine-rounds/october-narrative-medicine-rounds-tom-sleigh

09/10/2026

One week left to register at the early-bird rate for our fall Narrative Medicine intensive.

Join us in New York City for Embodiment and Attention: Narrative Medicine Fundamentals, an immersive introduction to the methods and practices of Narrative Medicine.

This year’s guest faculty include Mark Kissler, MD, internist and Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who will explore Simone Weil’s understanding of attention and its applications to the practice of medicine; and David Leventhal, Program Director and founding teacher of Dance for PD®, who will lead an interactive exploration of movement as narrative.

We welcome clinicians, writers, academics, scholars, students, and all those interested in the intersection of narrative and medicine.

📍 Columbia University Irving Medical Center
📅 October 23–25, 2026
🎟️ Register by September 18: bit.ly/Fall26Workshop

09/08/2026

Join us tomorrow, Wednesday, September 9 at 6pm EDT for Narrative Medicine Rounds. For our opening Rounds of the 2026-2027 season, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, social psychiatrist and the Helen and Robert Fullilove Professor of Community Health at the University of Orange. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, DLAPA, Hon AIA has conducted research on AIDS and other epidemics of poor communities, with a special interest in the relationship between the collapse of communities and decline in health. She is the author of over 100 scientific papers and nine books. Among her books are Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It, Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities and Main Street: How a City’s Heart Connects Us All. Her new book, The Tao of K-Drama: Wise Narratives for a Troubled World will be released September 14, 2026, from Oxford University Press as the first book in OUP’s new Narrative Medicine Series.

In The Tao of K-Drama: Wise Narratives for a Troubled World, Dr. Fullilove analyzes K-dramas—South Korean television series—from a social psychiatry perspective, making a compelling case for popular storytelling as a form of narrative medicine: a way of countering isolation, metabolizing trauma, and restoring social imagination. Inviting readers to watch differently—and to feel differently—The Tao of K-Drama reveals how stories can become shared tools for survival, connection, and healing in an increasingly fragmented world.

The evening will be moderated by CUIMC Division of Narrative Medicine Founders and Co-Directors Dr. Craig Irvine and Dr. Maura Spiegel.

🩺 Registration: https://shorturl.at/JaG6h

09/02/2026

Join us next Wednesday, September 9 at 6pm EDT for Narrative Medicine Rounds. For our opening Rounds of the 2026-2027 season, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, social psychiatrist and the Helen and Robert Fullilove Professor of Community Health at the University of Orange. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, DLAPA, Hon AIA has conducted research on AIDS and other epidemics of poor communities, with a special interest in the relationship between the collapse of communities and decline in health. She is the author of over 100 scientific papers and nine books. Among her books are Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It, Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America’s Sorted-Out Cities and Main Street: How a City’s Heart Connects Us All. Her new book, The Tao of K-Drama: Wise Narratives for a Troubled World will be released September 14, 2026, from Oxford University Press as the first book in OUP’s new Narrative Medicine Series.

In The Tao of K-Drama: Wise Narratives for a Troubled World, Dr. Fullilove analyzes K-dramas—South Korean television series—from a social psychiatry perspective, making a compelling case for popular storytelling as a form of narrative medicine: a way of countering isolation, metabolizing trauma, and restoring social imagination. Inviting readers to watch differently—and to feel differently—The Tao of K-Drama reveals how stories can become shared tools for survival, connection, and healing in an increasingly fragmented world.

The evening will be moderated by CUIMC Division of Narrative Medicine Founders and Co-Directors Dr. Craig Irvine and Dr. Maura Spiegel.

🩺 Registration: https://shorturl.at/JaG6h

05/26/2026

Narrative Medicine alum Sal Marx uses visual storytelling to give chronic illness patients their voices back.

Through comics, painting, and mixed media, their work asks what we can say through art that words alone can't express.

From palliative care wards in Vienna to building an archive with the Sick Futures Collective, Marx treats creative work as a form of care.

🎨 Read the full story: https://sps.columbia.edu/news/artists-prescription-how-sal-marx-using-visual-storytelling-give-patients-their-voices-back

Address

630 W 168th Street, PH 1525
New York, NY
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Telephone

+12123051952

Website

http://narrativemedicine.org/

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