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Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, DLitt (Hon), is an attending physician in the medical clinic at Bellevue Hospital, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine. She divides her time between seeing patients, teaching medical students and residents, editing and writing. |
Dr.
Ofri was born in New York City. She studied physiology
as an undergraduate at McGill University in Montreal.
She spent the next decade at New York University Medical
Center and Bellevue Hospital for her medical and scientific
education. She obtained her PhD in biochemistry along
with her MD, followed by a residency at Bellevue in internal medicine.
After residency,
Dr. Ofri spent nearly two years traveling. She worked
as a free-lance physician in a variety of communities from
East Hampton to rural New Mexico. In between job assignments
she spent time in Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Peru
learning Spanish for her eventual return to inner-city medicine.
During her travels she dragged along her laptop, grateful
to finally have time to write down the stories that had
accumulated during her years at Bellevue. These stories
have been published in numerous literary and medical journals,
and are collected in her first book, Singular
Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue. Dr. Ofri's
second book, Incidental Findings: Lessons From My Patients
on the Art of Medicine, was published in 2005 by Beacon Press.
Dr. Ofri's
essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, New England Journal
of Medicine, The Lancet, the Los Angeles Times,
and on National Public Radio. Her writings have been
included in Best American Essays 2002 and 2005, and Best
American Science Writing 2003. She is the recipient
of the Missouri Review Editor's Prize for nonfiction and the McGovern award by the American Medical Writers Association for "preeminent contributions to medical communication." She has received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Curry College and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.
Dr. Ofri
has a particular interest in the relationship of literature
and medicine. She has introduced a program encouraging
medical students to experiment with literary descriptions
of patient encounters to help explore the complexities of
illness.
Dr. Ofri is
the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of the Bellevue Literary Review,
a literary journal devoted to writings about the human body,
illness, health and healing. She is also
Associate Chief Editor of the Bellevue
Guide to Outpatient Medicine, a textbook of internal
medicine published by British Medical Journal Publications.
Additionally, she has developed a bilingual (Spanish-English) collection of
educational materials for patients.
Dr.
Ofri lives in New York with her husband, three children, and
dog. In her free time Dr. Ofri has studied modern dance at the
Martha Graham School
of Contemporary Dance. She has been seen zipping through
Manhattan traffic on her rickety old ten-speed.
Read Living Will from Incidental Findings, or listen to Danielle Ofri read it.
Read Possessing Her Words from Singular Intimacies.
See Danielle Ofri read Intensive Care from Singular Intimacies.
To purchase Danielle Ofri's books, visit your local bookstore, or order online from Beacon Press or Amazon.
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Incidental Findings and Singular Intimacies are published by Beacon Press, a nonprofit, independent press
since 1854. |
Singular Intimacies is published in paperback by Penguin, part of Penguin-Putnam, the second largest English-language trade publisher in the world.
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photo credits: Joon Park
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