For more than 20 years, I’ve reported on, analyzed, and written intimate narrative about American social issues, focusing on health, healthcare, and medicine. My first book, The Caregivers: A Support Group’s Stories of Slow Loss, Courage, and Love, chronicles two years in the lives of people caring for ill and elderly family members (Scribner 2014; paperback 2015).

In 2022 I received my PhD in American Studies from Brown; my research focused on the politics of women’s care. During the program, I held an American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women and for three years was a research associate with the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center.

I now teach journalism full time in the Nonfiction Writing program at Brown. 

My next book chronicles how women in care roles—as the Mother, the Nurse, the Housewife, and the Maid—have shaped American politics. 

Before all this, I was the founding editor of the Nieman Narrative Digest, now called Nieman Storyboard, at Harvard University. I’ve received journalism fellowships from the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University and from the Gerontological Society of America. 

I live in western Massachusetts, where I love making music with my husband and two adult sons and hiking with my two dogs. I’ve practiced meditation and yoga for most of my adult life.