The Medical Humanities & the Arts Program (MedMuse) is the home for the arts and humanities at the medical school, with programs that support diversity and integrate the arts and humanities into medical education, scholarly endeavors, and the practice of medicine.
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Registration for this series will resume in February, 2026. Thank you for your understanding.
Stanford Writing and Publishing Rx
Master the Craft of Writing in medicine, health and beyond in this no-nonsense virtual discussion series with special guest authors. Join us for this interactive discussion series hosted by the Stanford School of Medicine’s Medical Humanities and the Arts Program, and Director of Writing and Storytelling, Dr. Laurel Braitman, New York Times bestselling author. Learn practical tips and techniques for improving your work and sharing it with broad public audiences–whether you’re interested in fiction, narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, poetry, radio/podcasts, or other forms of storytelling about health, and medicine.
Read more about our speakers. This series is ongoing, check back for updated speakers!
The Dr. Paul Kalanithi Writing Award- Opening for Submissions Nov 17, 2025
Deadline to submit: January 10, 2026
Dorothy Summers 3rd Annual Art Prize
Announcing this years winners!
First place:
Satellite Baby Sutra, Materia Medica, Inner Landscape, Neijing Tu (内景图)
Grace Jin
2nd place:
Purple Seeds, Blue Kintsugi, Beyond the Box
Queenie Wong
3rd place:
Neuroflora
Sevval Altay
Honorable mention:
At the Bedside
Charu Jain
“In this biomedical revolution, we need the humanities now more than ever.”
-Lloyd B. Minor, MD, Dean, Stanford University School of Medicine
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2014/04/06/the-humanities-and-medicine/
Program News
07/08/2025 The Kalanithi legacy: ‘Paul wanted his life to have meaning’ By Mark Conley, Stanford Medicine News. His gift to the world was a poignant telling of a promising young life taken by cancer a decade ago. Still today, the Stanford Medicine neurosurgeon's wife Lucy receives notes of gratitude weekly.
06/14/2025 Three Hopes and a Dream: Bryant Lin Keynote Address | 2025 Stanford School of Medicine Graduation
At Stanford Medicine’s graduation, keynote speaker Bryant Lin, MD, clinical professor of medicine who has transformed his own cancer experience into a living lesson for others, shared his three hopes and a dream for the Class of 2025: Never forget to be curious, creative, and kind.
Lin is the director of Stanford Medicine’s Medical Humanities and the Arts program and co-founder of the Center for Asian Health Research and Education. After being diagnosed with advanced metastatic lung cancer — despite never smoking — he created MED 275, a course that shared his journey with students across Stanford.
related links:
06/12/2025 Stanford's Dr. Bryant Lin on living with lung cancer
06/02/2025 Stanford professor turns his terminal cancer diagnosis into a class on life, death and hope
03/21/2025 Grief and joy go hand in hand. How one woman learned to embrace both By Manoush Zomorodi, Harsha Nahata, Rachel Faulkner White, Sanaz Meshkinpour, National Public Radio
02/26/2025 When This Professor Got Cancer, He Didn’t Quit. He Taught a Class About It. By Kate Selig Photographs by Rachel Bujalski, The New York Times.
10/25/2024 Diagnosed with disease he studied, Stanford doctor puts his personal story at center of new class
Stanford Medicine physician Dr. Bryant Lin is the perfect professor to teach the course “From Diagnosis to Dialogue: A Doctor's Real-Time Battle with Cancer” at Stanford. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.
The class focuses on the cancer journey of a non-smoking patient diagnosed with lung cancer. Dr. Lin is that patient.
“I want to take something that is obviously very negative to me personally and get some benefit out of it for at least for other people,” Dr. Lin said.
10/25/2024 When the lung cancer patient is a beloved Stanford teacher and physician, learning gets personal
09/10/2024 Mental health, AI and inclusive health care among topics at Big Ideas conference
Speakers at the two-day event , sponsored by the Medical Humanities and the Arts Program, discussed a variety of topics that encouraged attendees to reimagine what the health care field could look like, if only some of their big ideas came to fruition. The ideas included using AI to create new antibiotics; the value of compelling, accurate science storytelling; retooling the ever-cumbersome electronic health record; and treating anxiety as a stage of grief.
Rally by the Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine department.
We at Medicine & the Muse join Stanford Medicine and its departments in denouncing the societal and structural racism that leads to violence against Black Americans. This systemic racism also leads to widespread health inequalities: a higher death rate from COVID-19, misconceptions about pain perception, and for Black women, a much higher breast cancer death rate. The list goes on. We at Medicine & the Muse stand for inclusion, diversity, respect, and justice. We stand with our Black friends, colleagues, patients, students, trainees, and others who are suffering.
All of the events, news, and updates related to the Frankenstein@200 initative.
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Stanford Medicine Orchestra
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Stanford Medicine Chorus
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Ongoing Events
Writing Medicine: Weekly reflective writing session for healthcare workers and their loved ones
A virtual space for healthcare workers and the people who love them to write, reflect and share.
Saturdays
10AM – 11AM PST