[act-ma] (Wed. 3/26) Helene Atwan and Danielle Ofri Discuss "Why Doctors Write" at Cambridge Forum

[Cambridge Forum]

Cambridge Forum
 3 Church Street ● Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-2727
email: director at cambridgeforum.org
cambridgeforum.org

Release                                                                                                         March 11, 2014

WHY DOCTORS WRITE: Danielle Ofri in Conversation with Helene Atwan at Cambridge Forum

On Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 7 p.m. Cambridge Forum hosts physician, author and editor Danielle Ofri, in conversation with Beacon Press director Helene Atwan,
 as they discuss “Why Doctors Write” and the impact of literature on 
their professional lives as physician and editor. How does writing 
change Ofri’s practice of medicine? How does editing the Bellevue 
Literary Review inform her view of her hospital and her patients?  What 
does publishing a “doctor who writes” add to Beacon Press’s legacy?  How
 has Helene Atwan’s sense of the power of writing changed through her 
work with Danielle Ofri?

Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD is an 
Associate Professor of Medicine at New York University School of 
Medicine but her clinical home is at Bellevue Hospital, the oldest 
public hospital in the country. She is a founder and Editor-in-Chief of 
the Bellevue Literary Review. Her newest book is What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine, which will be available for sale and signing after the forum.   Dr. Ofri is the author of three previous books about life in medicine (Medicine in Translation: Journeys with my Patients;  Incidental Findings: Lessons from my Patients in the Art of Medicine; and  Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue).  She was also editor of a medical textbook—The Bellevue Guide to Outpatient Medicine—which won a Best Medical Textbook award.

Danielle
 Ofri writes regularly for the New York Times about medicine and the 
doctor-patient relationship. Her essays have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Atlantic, Slate, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, CNN and on National Public Radio.  

Helene Atwan
 has been director of Beacon Press since 1995. She began her career in 
publishing at Alfred A. Knopf, and has worked at The Viking Press, 
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Simon and Schuster. She serves on the 
board of PEN-New England and the National Coalition against Censorship 
(NCAC) and has lectured on publishing at the New York University and 
Radcliffe College.  

This program is part of the series of 
Cambridge Forum discussions, “My Life Touched by Art”, supported by a 
grant from the Cambridge Arts Council and the Massachusetts Cultural 
Council, a public agency.  

The program is free and open to the 
public.  It takes place at the First Parish in Cambridge, 3 Church 
Street in Harvard Square.  Cambridge Forum is recorded and edited for 
public radio broadcast. Edited podcasts are available at 
www.cambridgeforum.org.  Select forums can also be viewed in their 
entirety on YouTube.

#####

Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone:  617-495-2727
email:  mailto:director at cambridgeforum.org
website:  http://www.cambridgeforum.org

The Adventure of Ideas.  The Power of Dialogue.