April Narrative Medicine Rounds with Lucy Sante

For our April Rounds we are thrilled to welcome Lucy Sante, Belgian-American writer and critic and author of the recently published I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, a memoir of a life spent pursuing a dream of artistic truth while evading the truth of her own gender identity, until, with the help of a face-altering photo app, at the age of 67 she turned to face who she really was. Sante’s memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. Sante brings a loving irony to her account of her unsteady first steps; there was much she found she still needed to learn about being a woman after some sixty years cloaked in a man’s identity, in a man’s world. A marvel of grace and empathy, I Heard Her Call My Name parses with great sensitivity many issues that touch our lives deeply, of gender identity and far beyond.

Lucy Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, Folk Photography, The Other Paris, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, and Nineteen Reservoirs. Her most recent book I Heard Her Call My Name published in February. Her awards include a Whiting Writers Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy Award (for album notes), an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman Center fellowships. She recently retired after twenty-four years teaching at Bard College.

Lucy Sante will be in conversation with Jae Sevelius, Ph.D. (they/them), a Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University, a Clinical Psychologist, and a Research Scientist at New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Sevelius’ community-engaged research focuses on developing and evaluating trauma-informed, gender-affirming, and peer-facilitated interventions to improve mental health and other health outcomes among transgender and gender expansive people in the United States and Brazil. Dr. Sevelius also leads research on psychedelic-assisted therapy for identity-based trauma.

Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds held on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year, hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Rounds are supported by live captioning. If you have any other accessibility needs or concerns, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 212-854-2388 or disability@columbia.edu at least 10 days in advance of the event. We do our best to arrange accommodations received after this deadline but cannot guarantee them. A recording of our Virtual Narrative Medicine rounds is available following the live session on the Narrative Medicine YouTube channel, and you can watch other recent Rounds events there.