Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar and one of the founders of the field of narrative medicine. She completed her MD at Harvard Medical School and her PhD in English at Columbia University. She is the Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine, Professor of Medicine, and founding chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons. Her research in narrative medicine has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and many private foundations. She has authored, co-authored, or co-edited four books on narrative medicine. The NEH, the NIH, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and numerous medical associations have honored her with awards and distinctions. She lectures and teaches internationally and publishes extensively in leading medical and literary journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association, Academic Medicine, Narrative, Henry James Review, Poetics Today, and SubStance.