Posts Tagged‘Interviews’

Home » Interviews » Page 38

A Doctor’s Initiation (and an Author’s): An Interview with Sandeep Jauhar

by Erika Dreifus on
3

A DOCTOR’S INITIATION (AND AN AUTHOR’S): AN INTERVIEW WITH SANDEEP JAUHAR

by Erika Dreifus

(This interview was first published in The Practicing Writer‘s January 2008 issue.)

A little more than a year ago, I read an article in New York magazine by Sandeep Jauhar. Since I’d been following his writing with great interest for several years–he is married to the elder sister of one of my own sister’s very best friends–I was delighted to learn in that article’s bio note that he was completing a memoir. I e-mailed him right away, and asked if he’d participate in an interview for The Practicing Writer once the book was published. He responded immediately, and affirmatively, and most graciously.

So I am thrilled to present this interview, timed to coincide with Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s publication of Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation. Knowing Sandeep (and having read many examples of his excellent prose) before the book’s publication, I suspected he’d have a lot to share with us, especially concerning writing nonfiction about science and balancing writing with another, highly demanding full-time career (plus family life). He hasn’t disappointed.

But before we get to the Q&A, let’s introduce him a little more completely. Sandeep Jauhar is the Director of the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, the largest program of its kind on Long Island. He trained as an experimental physicist at the University of California-Berkeley, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. After earning his Ph.D., he went to medical school at Washington University in St. Louis. He completed internship, residency, and a cardiology fellowship at prominent teaching hospitals in New York City. Since 1998 he has been writing regularly about medicine for The New York Times. He is the recipient of a South Asian Journalists Association Special Recognition Award for outstanding stories about medicine. His first book, Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation, which focuses on a key year in his medical training, has just been published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He lives in New York City with his wife and their son.

Erika Dreifus (ED): Fairly early in your memoir, you tell us that “journalism had always been a passion” of yours. You mention that you spent the summer before starting medical school on a science journalism fellowship sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. You also mention an internship you undertook–while you were a full-time medical student–with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Please tell us a little about your training and development as a writer–how these (and any other) experiences proved formative.

Sandeep Jauhar (SJ): In high school I always enjoyed writing. But like most budding writers, I didn’t know how to parlay my interest into a career. When I went to Berkeley in 1985, I made a deliberate choice to focus on science and math. My writing interest lay dormant for many years until I came across a brochure advertising the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellows Program. I applied and, much to my amazement, got the fellowship. I spent the summer of 1995 at the Washington, DC, bureau of Time magazine.

That experience convinced me that journalism and writing had to be a part of my career if I was going to feel fulfilled. Heeding the advice of journalism mentors, I landed a reporting internship at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch during my second year in medical school. The internship taught me how to write 500-word news stories on deadline. These pieces and some longer feature articles became the portfolio I presented to The New York Times. Cornelia Dean, the science editor, gave me my first big break in 1998 by accepting a query for a 1200-word piece about the closing of a leprosy hospital in Louisiana. I eventually started writing essays about internship and residency for the science section of The Times. (My first essay required 3 or 4 complete rewrites! I remember Cornelia advising me to stop being “writerly” and just tell the story.) After a couple of years I moved on to 3000-word pieces for the Sunday Times Magazine.

ED: Which specific writers, teachers, and other works have influenced you?

SJ: Several doctor-writers have made a strong impact me: Abraham Verghese, Melvin Konner (whose memoir Becoming a Doctor accompanied me everywhere during my first two years of medical school as I looked forward to my clinical rotations on the hospital wards), and Berton Roueche (the old New Yorker writer whose baroque clinical tales inspired a generation of readers). I also enjoy reading Atul Gawande’s insightful essays in The New Yorker.

The non-medical memoir that has had the most influence on me is Stop-Time by Frank Conroy. Conroy, of course, ran the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for many years. His memoir of adolescence is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. When I first met with my book editor, Paul Elie, he asked me about some of my favorite books, the sort of books that I might aspire to write. When I mentioned Stop-Time, Paul immediately started recounting the prologue, which finds Conroy speeding in a car through the English countryside. (At that point I knew I was working with the right editor.) Other memoirs I’ve especially enjoyed reading recently are James McBride’s The Color of Water and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone.

ED: What resources might you recommend for those interested in developing their skills in (or simply learning more about) writing about science for a general audience?

SJ: The Mass Media Fellowship is a great way to start for scientists and engineers. For non-scientists, I’d recommend making a habit of reading the science section of The New York Times and science pieces in The New Yorker. The “best science writing” anthologies are also excellent introductions.

ED: One of the episodes in this book that really caught my attention concerns your first visit to the Times offices. I won’t ask you to recount that here (readers, you’ll have to check it out yourself!). But I will ask you to describe a bit about another event: the first Times essay acceptance. As you narrate it, the publication of your essay (a piece of writing whose purpose you characterize as “to warn hospital administrators and future residents to the dangers” of an element of your own training, “caused a firestorm” at the hospital. To put it bluntly, not everyone at the hospital was happy with it. Were you aware of the reaction the essay might provoke ahead of time? And, on a related note, how did you learn to negotiate the particular ethical and professional concerns you have faced as someone whose work as a writer is so entwined with the very personal medical stories of your patients?

SJ: I knew the essay would not be well received, but at that point in my internship, I didn’t care a whole lot about what hospital administrators thought of me. I wanted to see the essay get published, for other residents, and also for myself.

Preserving patient confidentiality is a concern of any medical writer. I believe that my work as a doctor is a part of my story, but obviously this story overlaps with the stories of my patients, so privacy and confidentiality need to be protected. It is probably more difficult to do this in a publication like the Times than in magazines or in books, where pseudonyms can be used and identifying details can be changed. These devices aren’t allowed at the Times, so one often has to leave out interesting details, which isn’t ideal for writing but is obviously the right thing to do.

ED: In the memoir’s acknowledgments, you thank your agent, Todd Shuster, whom you say “knew [you] should write a book well before” you did. That’s intriguing. Tell us more! How, in fact, did you realize that you had a book to write? And how did you come to work with this agent?

SJ: Todd actually contacted me after an essay of mine about mysterious fevers was published in the Times in November 1999. He tried to convince me for many years to try my hand at a book, but I could never find the right subject. Eventually, I proposed compiling the essays I had published in the Times into a book. We circulated a proposal and received interest from several publishers. FSG was interested, too, but not in the book I had proposed. They suggested instead a book about my education as a doctor. That was in August 2003.

ED: Since I know a little bit about you–I know that in addition to treating patients you teach medicine; I know your wonderful wife and son (and I can attest that you are a hands-on dad–I’ve seen you with your adorable little boy at his swimming lessons!); I continue to see your byline in the Times. When on earth did you manage to write this book? Many writers find it tiresome to talk about their “routine,” but I’d really like to know how you’ve been able to nurture your writing career, especially given how consuming a life in medicine, as you describe it in your book, can be.

SJ: People find time for what they enjoy. I write on weekends and at night after my son goes to bed. I sometimes find time at the hospital during the day. Luckily for me, my work informs my writing, so the whole thing is sort of “organic.”

ED: Anything else you’d like to share with us? News on upcoming appearances, for example?

SJ: [In the near future] I have two book readings scheduled: on January 3 at 6 pm at the Corner Bookstore in Manhattan (Madison at 93rd St) [Editor’s note: I attended this packed reading, and it was terrific] and on January 17 at 7 pm at the Barnes and Noble in Manhasset. [Editor’s Note: On December 27, Sandeep and his book were also featured on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation.”]

ED: Thank you so much, Sandeep.

Visit http://www.sandeepjauhar.com to learn more about Sandeep Jauhar and his new book.

(c) 2007 Erika Dreifus

Teaching Writing Online: An Interview with Matthew Lippman

by Erika Dreifus on
1

This interview originally appeared in the December 2007 issue of The Practicing Writer newsletter, a free monthly newsletter for fictionists, poets, and writers of creative nonfiction.

These days, many writers consider taking writing courses online. Many writers consider teaching them, too.

My own recent foray into poetry writing has been facilitated, and much enriched, by the two classes I’ve taken to date through the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Both “Poetry Writing I” and “Poetry Writing II” have been led by Matthew Lippman, and in this interview Matthew shares some insights and experiences from his online teaching career.

Here’s a little background about Matthew: In 2005 he won the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize for his manuscript, The New Year of Yellow, which was published in January of 2007 by Sarabande Press. He has been a high school English teacher for 11 years. Currently he teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at Chatham High School in upstate New York, and has been a member of the faculty, Writing Division, in Columbia University’s Summer Program for High School Students, as well as an instructor at The Gotham Writers’ Workshop. In 1990 he received his MFA from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, and in 1997 he was granted a master’s in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. His poetry has been published widely in such journals and anthologies as The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The Literary Review, Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, and The Best American Poetry of 1997. In 1991 he was the recipient of the James Michener/Paul Engle Poetry Fellowship from the University of Iowa; in 2004 he won a New York State Foundation of the Arts grant for his fiction.

Recently, Matthew responded to questions about his online teaching career from Erika Dreifus.

ERIKA DREIFUS (ED): Please tell us how you began your online teaching career.

MATTHEW LIPPMAN (ML): I got involved with the Gotham Writers’ Workshop teaching live classes in 2001 and this led to teaching online. It fell into my lap and I was a bit curious since I had only taught live classes before. I was not “trained” to teach on-line, just took my style, my voice, and applied it to the lecture and critiques. The transition from teaching in front of a class of students to sitting at a computer and “running a course” was seamless.

ED: As a teacher, what would you say are the key differences (if any) between “live” and online workshops?

ML: The physical. There is nothing physical involved with online teaching other than sitting at a computer. I don’t know what anyone looks like. I can’t gauge the mood of a class because there are no spoken voices, there is no body language. But I have always been amazed at how I can get to “know” someone through their work, their involvement in the class discussion.

ED: As you see it, what are some advantages (and disadvantages) for a writer contemplating teaching online?

ML: It’s good work if you can get it. It’s a busy endeavor, this modern living, and if one has the opportunity to work from home talking/writing/discussing/critiquing the art of poetry (as I do) it’s a blessing. This on-line correspondence has a freedom to it in that I can be anywhere and be involved with other folks who are interested in a similar genre. The flip-side is that I don’t get to meet anyone. One thing about teaching that has always been rewarding for me is the human element and this has always involved face-to-face interactions. I don’t get this online and it can be a drag. Especially because I like people.

ED: You’ve recently begun offering poetry instruction online one-to-one as well as the group workshops. How did this opportunity develop?

ML: Former students began to inquire about continuing on in their “poetry studies.” I started working with two of them, and they really appreciated the kind of attention their work was getting. I think this is the beauty of the one-to-one experience–the extensive attention that the poetry receives. And it just felt like the natural progression of the instruction. One can garner a lot of information and feedback from a class, from a teacher, but if you are in that one-to-one environment, a whole other door opens up–the door of detail. What I mean is I can spend an hour on a poem, combing through it, reading and re-reading, to give it the best and most thorough critique that I am able to.

That said, I have never advertised or put any monies into getting the word out. Your newsletter and blog are the first venues in which I have let the outside world know about what it is I am doing.

ED: What has surprised you most about your online teaching experiences? What piece of advice do you wish someone might have offered you before you began teaching online?

ML: I am most surprised by how “intimate” relationships can be. It’s funny to say the word “relationship” but it is true. I have created relationships with people and these connections are developed ones that feel alive and real. I would never have expected this to be the case just typing and typing and typing into a faceless and white screen. It’s frightening and interesting all at once.

As for advice: I would say that it is very important to be extremely honest about the work. I try to compose my lectures like I would speak them. I want my “voice” to come through–the generous spirit, the humor, the intellectual vision. So, I’ve tried to write my lectures as if I were talking and not as if they were essays for a journal submission. In the critique process I try to attain a balance between the flattery and the critical. It is my job to let folks know what is not working and steer them to a more successful revision. But I don’t want to discourage and so it’s very important to me to find moments in the poem that come to life and are illustrations of what is beautiful in the writing. Really, that’s what the whole poetic undertaking is about, making something beautiful out of the mundane nature of language. I am always trying to strike a balance in my criticism and would encourage this of anyone getting into the business. Don’t be overly critical and don’t be overly glowing. Find a middle point, be attentive, be confident, be open. And lastly, try and meet the poet’s work on its own terms. The first woman I ever worked with, after a month of reading a hundred or so of her poems, told me that what she felt most grateful for was that I had read her work objectively and did not impose my own aesthetic sensibility on it. Of course, that’s not going to happen all the time, in every moment, but it certainly is something to strive to attain.

ED: And on a related note, what counsel/resources would you offer writers who want to develop their own online teaching careers?

ML: The most important element to teaching is creating a space–a classroom environment, an on-line environment, a board room–that is comfortable and safe and challenging. This requires, from the teacher, that he/she build trust between him/herself and his/her students. At the center of this trust, is having a voice that is open-hearted, generous and honest. So, once you have created this voice, established this as a teacher, then you can go out looking for students. I have been lucky in that there were folks that I was working with who wanted to continue their work and found me.

As I have said, this one-on-one consulting is something that found me. As for teaching online courses, there are a number of institutions that offer classes. Here are the links for some of them:

Gotham Writers’ Workshop
Writer’s Digest Online Workshops
UCLA Extension Writers’ Program

I would say, first, develop a teaching voice that works well and then investigate these institutions, contact them, send them a cover letter and a resume in hopes of finding employment. They are the best online institutions in the United States. Good luck.

And thank you, Erika, for giving me the time to expostulate a bit on what it is I do.

[To learn more about Matthew Lippman’s one-to-one poetry consultations, and to see a sample critique and locate Matthew’s contact information, please click here.]

Friday Finds: Author Interviews

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

In part because of some of my current day job responsibilities, author interviews are very much on my mind this week. So I send special thanks to Margaret Foley, who co-edits Thereby Hangs a Tale, for serendipitously writing in with a note about that site’s collection of author interviews, and to B.J. Epstein, a Windy City native, for pointing me to Chicago Magazine‘s series of Q&A features with notable writers (scroll down for archived interviews).

That should give you some reading material for the weekend! See you back here next week.

Friday Find: James Scott on Completing a Short Story

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

I recently mentioned my fondness for the author interviews posted at the One Story Web site. The latest features James Scott, who wrote the story I received most recently, “The Strings Attached.” Here’s one of my favorite segments from the interview:

How long did it take you to complete this story?

This story went through the wringer. It started in a craft class taught by Daniel Wallace at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Then I worked on it off and on (mostly off) for two years or so. Next it went through this amazing class at Emerson’s MFA program taught by Pam Painter called “Revision.” You basically play the part of butcher, eviscerate your story, see what’s edible and what gets tossed, stitch it all back together, and hope it’s delicious (Yes, I know—and am very glad—that butchers don’t actually sew meat together, but the metaphor worked up until then, don’t you think?). I also have to thank Urban Waite, Laura van den Berg, and Taylor Rogers for their close readings. And Hannah and everyone at One Story were so patient and wonderful and kind. So all in all, “The Strings Attached” honestly took at least twelve major edits and I don’t know how many—twenty?—little clean ups and tightenings over the course of three years.

Got that? Three years. We short story writers really do sweat this stuff. And that’s OK.

One Story Site Redesign

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

I’ve mentioned the journal One Story here before, but it’s time for another shout-out. A non-profit literary magazine featuring one short story mailed to subscribers every three weeks (and a paying market), One Story has recently redesigned its Web site.

One thing I really like about the Web site is the space accorded to interviews with each story’s author. The blog’s nice, too. Check it out. (And while you’re there, take a look at the “Save the Short Story” campaign info as well.)