Interview Issue #7: Mental Health April 15, 2021 At the Intersection of Whole Health: PSM Talks with Gina Frangello by Tracy Granzyk For Gina Frangello, author of four novels and countless essays, writing her memoir Blow Your House Down wasn’t a choice. She simply couldn’t write anything else until she put this book in the world for readers who, like herself, found their lives to be filled with unrelenting challenge. She doesn’t prescribe any particular action ...
Read MoreInterview Issue #6: Bias November 20th, 2020 November 20th, 2020 The Power of Our Actions: PSM Talks with Michele Harper by Tracy Granzyk ichele Harper’s breakout memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, was published in July of 2020. In it, she describes a life dedicated to healing and advocating for people in a US health system still searching for equity, and how her own process of healing has taught her to be a better doctor. Her surgically wrought prose ...
Read MoreInterview Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Strange Creatures: PSM Talks with Vikram Paralkar by A. M. Larks o call Vikram Paralkar an author and a researcher-doctor is correct but inaccurate. It is true that he is all those things, but it is imprecise to treat them as separate identities. Each feeds the other in such a unified way that they are inseparable. This is just as true in Paralkar’s second book, Night Theater, as ...
Read MoreInterview Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Graphic Medicine: PSM Talks with MK Czerwiec by A. M. Larks hen I mentioned that I wanted to do an interview to accompany my review of the graphic novel The Pervert, and thereby shine a spotlight on the graphic arts, my editor suggested I contact MK Czerwiec because she was a nurse who made comics. What I found when I went looking for her was not only ...
Read MoreInterview Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 “How Do We Define Healthcare?” PSM Talks with Kimberly Soenen by Tracy Granzyk hen I was introduced to Kimberly Soenen, the creative director and curator of “SOME PEOPLE” (Every)Body, a multidisciplinary exhibition of over 70 career photographers and artists pointing the lens at healthcare, I knew her work would speak volumes to our readers. One of the more powerful ways healthcare narratives imbue empathy is by using ...
Read MoreInterview Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 “Storytelling: An Act of Hope”: PSM Talks with Alex Kotlowitz by Tracy Granzyk lex Kotlowitz’s An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago might be considered a bookend to a 40-year career writing about the violence and the communities affected by it. In An American Summer he returns to the neighborhoods and relationships forged while writing There Are No Children Here, published in 1991 and named one ...
Read MoreInterview Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 “Health Care Is a Sacred Mission”: PSM Talks with Carl Shuker by A. M. Larks arl Shuker’s books are bound by place and demarcated by time. Whether he is writing about turn-of-the-century Tokyo, middle-class New Zealand and the age when we transition from children to adults, or Lebanon in the Arab Spring, Shuker finds the story to tell. In his most recent novel, A Mistake, Shuker pits his ...
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