My work focuses on intersections of health, community and the arts, through writing and public art, with a particular focus on the ongoing opioid epidemic. My first book, Ghostbodies: Towards a new theory of invalidism (Intellect Books, 2017), examines disability narratives within critical and literary theory, and has been followed by two further peer-reviewed books: Visceral: Essays on Illness Not as Metaphor (punctum books, 2017) and Opioids: Addiction, Narrative, Freedom (punctum books, 2018). This most recent book, Opioids, examines the ongoing opioid epidemic from the position both as a pain patient, and as someone whose community has been deeply affected by opioids.
This book and conversations it began led to the collaborative public art and public health project The Way We Live Now (2018), an interactive play produced through partnerships with Fenway Health, Boston Medical Center, and other stakeholders across Boston, that focused on facilitating public conversations about our experiences within this epidemic. In order to better support community projects such as this, I completed training as a Community Health Worker in 2019, through the Cambridge Health Alliance. Most recently, I’ve continued this work through the creation of a temporary and participatory opioid epidemic memorial for the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture in 2020. Across these projects, my work has been supported by The Boston Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and the Boston Cultural Council, and has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Ridenhaur Book Prize, and the Massachusetts Book Prize.
Currently, I work as a freelance Content Strategist and Researcher for the digital services agency Bloom Works, working closely with a team of UX researchers and designers. Projects include a playbook of promising practices in foster care for child welfare agencies, a report on the state of organ donation reform, and a landscape map of public service tech organizations, for clients including New America Foundation, Tech Talent Project, and ORGANIZE. I also served as Content Creator for the Vox Media project Language, Please, a database of recommendations for journalists writing on a variety of DE&I related topics.
For fun, I also write a very silly newsletter about slapstick that you can find on Substack.