Editorial Board

Tracy Granzyk, Editor in Chief

Tracy Granzyk, MS, MFA wears many hats in the healthcare space. She is a writer, filmmaker and healthcare content developer working to increase awareness around a culture of safety, health equity and patient engagement throughout the healthcare continuum, as well as a patient advocate. She has a growing portfolio of healthcare-related stories for web, print, and film, which incorporates knowledge gained from multiple roles held throughout healthcare delivery, including: research, administration, and the biotech industry. The result of having worn multiple healthcare hats is a unique perspective on stories that can drive real healthcare change.

In addition to being the founding editor-in-chief of Please See Me, Tracy serves as a Senior Solutions Consultant at TiER1 Performance, the Director of the Center for Healthcare Narratives at the MedStar Institute for Quality and Safety and is faculty at the Academy for Emerging Leaders in Patient Safety where her focus is creating a space for all to share their stories. She can be reached via email (tgranz24@gmail.com), on Instagram (@tgranz24), and on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tgranz24/).

Laria Jones, Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Section Guest Editor

Laria Jones, CAPM, is Program Manager, Education for the MedStar Institute for Quality and Safety (MIQS), where she manages the operational processes for internal and external education programs. Laria serves as Program Coordinator for the MedStar Health Quality and Safety Physician Leadership Fellowship, and Program Manager for the MedStar Health Patient and Family Advisory Council for Quality & Safety (PFACQS®). She also serves as budget liaison for MIQS education and social media liaison managing all of MIQS social media and website outreach efforts.She is a graduate of Liberty University, with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) through the Project Management Institute (PMI), and is an associate faculty member at the MedStar Health Institute for Quality and Safety’s Center for Healthcare Narratives. In this role she will serve as Guest Editor for Please See Me’s Non-Fiction and Fiction submissions. An aspiring writer, she is currently enrolled at Liberty University pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing..

Steve Granzyk, Poetry Section Editor

Steve Granzyk first fell in love with poetry his senior year of high school, in an elective course, “Modern Poetry,” taught by James Wicklund. He took his first poetry writing class with the poet Elizabeth Libbey at Northeastern Illinois University in 1979. More recently, he has done workshops with poets Matt Miller, at Exeter, with the late Tony Hoagland and Maggie Queeny at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. He is retired from the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where he taught classes in literature, film, and poetry writing, helping to launch Inverse, the high school’s first poetry slam team.  His poems have appeared in various publications, including the English Journal, Blacklight, a publication of the University of Chicago BSA, and Ariel Chart. His latest poems, “A Season for Motley” and “Esther in Blue,” and a flash fiction piece, “Last One Standing,” can be found online in WINK. He is currently working on a longer dramatic poem, A Death in Rockwell Gardens, about the fatal shooting of his father in a CHA Project in 1967, and the chronic disease of gun violence in Chicago.

Grateful for Our Past Editors

John Flynn York, Managing Editor

John Flynn York was our founding Managing Editor.

Grace Jasmine, Editor – Fiction

Grace Jasmine writes in a variety of genres. With 47 nonfiction books in print, she decided to return to her first love, writing for theater. Writing credits include: Rainbows, Tim Doran, composer (Jasmine wrote, directed, and starred in this show, which was produced first in multiple venues in Los Angeles and then off-off Broadway); The Lover-A Tale of Obsessive Love, Ron Barnett, composer (Lonny Chapman Theatre premier). Jasmine wrote two original musicals that premiered in summer 2017, at the Hollywood Fringe Festival: Sybil’s Closet and F**ked Up Fairy Tales. WeHo times called the song, “Love is Love” Jasmine wrote (With David Anthony, composer) for F**ked Up Fairy Tales “…an incredible song that it merits a place among the classics of musical theatre.” (WeHo Times, July 2, 2017). Jasmine’s new straight play, The Masher premiered at the 2019 Hollywood Fringe at Asylum’s Studio C Theatre to sold out houses and received the 2019 The Hollywood Encore! Producers’ Award based on “artistic merit, commercial potential, and developmental possibilities.” Jasmine also directed this production.

Jasmine also writes creative nonfiction essays on emotional and physical health; her piece “My Mother’s Stroke” was recently published by New Thought Vortex. Her dramedy piece “The Chemo Show” recently appeared in Memoir Magazine. Jasmine’s piece on death and grieving, “Your Order Is Up” recently appeared in The Helix. She has just finished her screenplay, Get a Life and is working on her musical, Skin Deep, and two straight plays: The Rage of Ordinary People and Rogue. Jasmine holds an MFA in Screenwriting and Playwriting from the University of California at Riverside, is a native Californian living in Arizona with her family and is an avid dog lover. Grace Jasmine is a member of the Dramatists Guild. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @beautynblog.

AM Larks, Editor – Fiction

AM Larks writes fiction and nonfiction. She has performed her stories at Lit Up at Town Hall Theatre in Lafayette, California. She is the former Blog Editor and current contributor to The Coachella Review. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, a Juris Doctorate, and her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University California Riverside Palm Desert’s low residency program. She lives in Northern California with her well-behaved dog and sometimes-behaved husband.

Grateful for Our Past Guest Editors

Brenda Arthur, Guest Editor – Creative Nonfiction

Brenda Arthur, a busy rising medical resident and later junior attending, submitted her poignant and unflinching creative nonfiction piece, Exhaustion, to our 2020 Heroes Issue. We invited her to serve as a Guest Editor shortly after and were fortunate enough to steal some of her time while serving as a Creative Nonfiction Guest Editor.

Barbara Riddle-Dvorak, Guest Editor – Fiction

A native New Yorker, Barbara’s twin passions are literature and biology. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Brandeis University, but ultimately chose to return to her first loves- writing fiction and memoir. She has worked as a teacher and editor, and is proud of being a founding co-editor of MOBIUS (Univ. of California Press), now called The Journal of Continuing Education for Health Professionals (Wiley). For many years she was a Senior Editor in the Dept. of Neurosurgery at U.C.S.F. Most recently, she has enjoyed working with immigrants in the Tampa Bay Area, teaching English as a Second Language and serving as a career counselor to individuals seeking a better, safe life in the United States. Her coming-of-age novel, The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke, was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of their Best of 2019 Indie Novels. She’s working on a second novel, and a memoir about her girlhood in Greenwich Village, when she’s not happily renovating her Victorian fixer-upper in a small town in Maine. For more, see www.barbarariddle.com

Chinaza Eziaghighala, Guest Editor – Fiction

Chinaza Eziaghighala is a medical doctor who tells stories. An interdisciplinary writer at the intersection of health, film, comics and literature, she is a University of Iowa International Writing Program and EbonyLife Creative Academy Alum. She won the 2021 Twelve Days of Brittle paper stories competition and was Longlisted for the 2020 African Writers Awards (AWA) and the Wakini Kuria Award. Her works are in/forthcoming Brittle Paper, Afritondo and British Science Fiction Association’s Focus. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers Association of America and a First Reader for Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores. Connect with her here: chinazaeziaghighala.disha.page or on her Twitter @chinazaezims

Nkateko Masinga, Guest Editor – Poetry

Nkateko Masinga is a South African doctor and writer. She is a 2019 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency, a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow, and a Golden Key Scholar. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018. Her most recent chapbook, psalm for chrysanthemums, was selected by the African Poetry Book Fund and Akashic Books for publication in the 2020 New-Generation African Poets box set.