Chase the muse with me.
Narrative Medicine
“There’s something validating about seeing your story on a piece of paper.”
–from “Telling Life stories May Help Improve Care for Cancer Patients,” an interview with Kara Lofton, West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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"I think poetry can be important in capturing the experiences of people grappling with illness—patients, caregivers, health professionals, and so on. Reading these experiences can be transformative, too. A person can be sick, but also have a sense of well-being, and that’s something that I think a poet can help with. I try to honor that lived experience."
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--from Speaking of Marvels interview
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Healthcare Is Human
Since 2020, Healthcare is Human (HIH) has been telling authentic healthcare stories. Dr. Ryan McCarthy created HIH in Martinsburg, WV, to give voice to individuals who were under-represented as the Covid-19 pandemic began. Since then, HIH has grown exponentially and is now a complex narrative medicine initiative. Writer, poet, and narrative medicine expert Renée K. Nicholson co-hosts the podcast; Molly Humphreys, native of Shepherdstown, WV, photographer on the project, has captured hundred of images of healthcare workers in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia; Kym Mattioli produces the podcast.
HIH is supported by grants from the West Virginia Humanities Council, WVU Foundation, and generous donors across West Virginia. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and other platforms.
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Workshops, Lectures, and Readings
A frequent speaker on health humanities and narrative medicine, Renée was recently a Keynote Speaker at Missouri Southern State University's Artful Medicine Symposium, the TAG Lecture for the Department of English at East Carolina University, and presented in the Volvox series for students and alumni of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, among other speaking engagements.
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I also offer writing workshops that inspire creative practice, often with a focus on writing and healthcare. My workshops include narrative medicine programs like The Poetry of Restoration, which uses writing as a tool for healing and reflection. I also teach craft workshops in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and help writers develop longer book projects.
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​I create custom workshops for specific groups and contexts. I specialize in creative writing for healthcare settings, working with medical professionals, patients, caregivers, and communities to help them find their voices through writing.
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Connective Tissue Book Series Editor
Connective Tissue is a broad series exploring the human condition and its intersection with health, illness, and healing through the lens of the humanities and its methodologies, as well as through expressive creative works that illuminate people’s lived experience with health, illness, and medicine. This series seeks to publish books that cover innovative approaches to healthcare, integrating expressive arts and humanities practices into health settings, as well as books of creative writing that artfully render stories of illness, disability and healthcare.
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To get a sense of what I'm interested in, see my articles for Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal, where I am a contributing writer.
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Where it all began: Off Belay
In 2014, I was contacted by a palliative care physician about helping a patient of his complete a memoir. I worked as a consulting writer and editor on that book, Off Belay: One Last Great Adventure.
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Off Belay marks the culmination of Jamie Shumway’s lifelong adventure. First captivated by nature fifty years ago on a school trip to Yosemite, the author devoted the rest of his life to the outdoors and to recreational pursuits, first in California and then in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he received his MEd and PhD degrees, and finally at West Virginia University, where he pursued a distinguished career in medical education.
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This memoir—begun after Shumway received a diagnosis of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease—is as unique as the life of the author. As Shumway’s physical condition deteriorates, the logistics of telling his story become as complicated as planning a canoe trip through the Grand Canyon (one of Shumway’s great undertakings). Throughout the course of Shumway's stories, the author sifts through the professional and personal events of a life well lived. Much of it had been lived outdoors: white-water boating, skiing, mountaineering, and rock-climbing.
