Good News — F.E.L. Priestley Prize citation

More good news: I’ve been named in the Priestley Prize, English Studies in Canada‘s award for ‘best’ essay published in the previous year’s issues. The essay brings forward Keats’ Negative Capability and Bayes’ Theorem to demonstrate how poetry can assist medical students to tolerate diagnostic ambiguity. That the judges specifically identify the “clear, actionable, and tangible social outcomes” that might come with broader poetic reasoning in medicine made me wonder if my dream might actually come true – a lyrical medicine brought into being in Canada.

COVER REVEAL

My hybrid verse novel concerning Willard, an intellectually disabled man, and a white-tailed buck, set at the dawn of the Cold War in southwestern New Brunswick. Damn, Julie Scriver does beautiful work.

Best Canadian, x2

An incredible week. While home in New Brunswick, teaching medical educators how to foster learning amongst non-neurotypical learners, I received TWO notices of inclusion in the Best Canadian Series: poetry, for “How to lose the audience” originally published in The Malahat Review, & essay, for “Diagnosis Day” from The Fiddlehead. Both of these pieces concern difference, and it was a spiritual experience to read “How to lose the audience” to the assembled physician audience in the Miramichi. My thanks to Rowan McCandless and the ‘hat’s editorial board for selecting my work, and to the team at Biblioasis for keeping the ‘best’ series going.