Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

09/04/2026

https://www.theintima.org/blog/i-want-to-hold-your-hand-a-reflection-on-barriers-well-being-and-gestures-of-care-by-writer-rosa-singer

If the objective is to minimize suffering, yours and mine, as patient and healthcare professional, how do we gesture to each other around the barriers of an imperfect system? Is there any gesture of care too small?

09/03/2026

SUBMISSIONS for the Fall-Winter 2026-27 issue are now open. Submit your work before our Call for Submissions closes on September 28th at 11:59pm EST. We review poetry, fiction, nonfiction, Field Notes, Studio Art, Multimedia and Academic work related to health, healing, the practice of medicine and illness narratives. Please review our Submission Guidelines, Patient Privacy Notice and AI Policy before submitting your work.

08/28/2026

https://www.theintima.org/blog/patientdialoguesvictoriayuan

In Mariana Ndrio’s “Chronos: Mind and Heart” ( Spring 2025 Intima ), crimson and white wires coil together, capturing the intricate relationship between thought and feeling. This symbiosis reminds me of some of the patients who informed my artwork titled “Pericardial Mnemosyne” ( Fall 2024...

08/21/2026

https://www.theintima.org/blog/reflections-on-my-fathers-doctor-by-jennifer-chianese-by-dixie-l-king

In the essay “ My Father’s Doctor ” ( Spring 2016 Intima ), Pennsylvania pediatrician Jennifer Chianese purports to write about her father’s relationship with his female doctor and the ways in which that relationship is both rooted in and transcends the traditional roles for women that is hi...

08/18/2026

Save the date: Tuesday, August 25th, at 6:00 PM at the 200 Main Street Library! Join Donna Bulseco, editor of “Where It Hurts: Dispatches from the Emotional Frontlines of Medicine,” and Ryn Gluckman, ER nursing director at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital, for a conversation about this newly released collection of essays, short stories, and poems. This event will be held at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, August 25th, at the Vineyard Haven Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

Health care workers see us all at our highest highs and our lowest lows. They’re heroes, healers, and confidants—but they’re also real people who struggle with burnout, doubt, frustration, fear, loneliness, shame, and anger. "Where It Hurts" shares the stories of over sixty medical professionals, offering a window into the daily highlights and difficulties of the health-care industry. This collection of beautifully written poems and highly relatable essays and short stories paints health-care workers as real people, working every day in the spaces between health and illness, life and death. From funny stories (for instance, the story of a doctor who helps his patient find a cure, which, strangely enough, involves fajitas) to heart-rending and heart-mending tales of connection between doctors and patients, "Where It Hurts" shows us what it means to truly be human.

From Grey’s Anatomy to The Pitt, our society has long been fascinated with stories of what it’s like to work in the high stress, high-stakes world of health care. According to the CDC, the health-care industry employs over twenty-two million workers, and "Where It Hurts" makes a great gift for anyone working in medicine—med school students, doctors, nurses, or EMTs. Literary and deeply moving, "Where It Hurts" reveals the challenges and triumphs of working in health care and invites us to live fully and empathize deeply with those around us.

08/14/2026

https://www.theintima.org/blog/learning-how-to-live-while-knowing-the-ending-by-katerina-obscura

When I first encountered Alexandra Miner’s “ What Remains ” (Spring 2021 Intima ) in the early days of my own glioma diagnosis, I finally exhaled a breath that I’d held deep down. My physicians did care! Despite losing so much function, and my grief over the life I’d built, the questions I...

08/10/2026

https://www.theintima.org/blog/voices-that-remain-gabriele-micozzi

Some voices outlast the people who spoke them. In his Crossroads blog, “The Voice that Lingers,” (June 19, 2026 Intima ) Kenneth Iserson, a professor emeritus of emergency medicine, tells it as a physician: the dead mentor keeps speaking in a student's stethoscope, in a resident's patience at tw

07/31/2026

https://www.theintima.org/blog/a-bunny-beauty-and-remembering-to-livenbspby-alexis-rehrmann

The bunny drew me in first. She is a well-loved stuffie, fur lightly matted even sketched in pencil, form slightly squashed from years of use.  Danica Snyder’s “Memento Mori, Memento Vivere ” (Spring 2025 Intima ) is in vibrant conversation with my essay “ Maybe It’s Beautiful ,” w

07/24/2026

https://www.theintima.org/blog/the-body-holds-it-all-love-labor-and-the-weight-of-carenbsp-by-mildred-galvez

With the same hands that now hold and annotate my textbooks, I once read and reread my mother’s biopsy results. With those same hands, I helped her rise from her chair when the chemotherapy was too strong, and with those same hands, I now care for my patients.