I am a writer and novelist with strong interests in social justice, narrative medicine, and the history of psychiatry. I earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, have Master's degrees in both French and German, and have traveled the globe. I have taught college classes in French, German, English, literature, composition, and creative writing. I have also been a guest contributor to the "On Being" blog of American Public Radio and a Pushcart Prize nominee.
I hold an appointment as an adjunct assistant professor in pediatrics in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, where I teach narrative medicine. I am on the editorial board of Bridle Path Press, a small, boutique, literary cooperative, which has published novels, short story collections, and poetry collections. I have presented my work at numerous national and regional conferences and have co-authored a handbook on writing.
I have published articles, essays, short stories, profiles, and four novels: Choke Creek, Wolf Constellation, The Hanging of Ruben Ashford (BrickHouse Books 2022) and The Eye Begins to See (Ethics Press 2023). My new novel, Radegonde and the First Crusade, is forthcoming in the spring of 2025 from BrickHouse Books. This website will provide you with a snapshot of my work, past, current, and forthcoming. Welcome.
In a hospital environment that is often hierarchical and siloed, attending a narrative medicine group reduces isolation among health care providers, makes them feel equally valued, and provides a platform to hear diverse perspectives. By moderating the stress that arises from the emotional labor of hospital work, narrative medicine may also enhance self-care. Journal of Radiology Nursing 36 (2017) 224-227
Lauren Small presents The Eye Begins to See in a workshop at the annual meeting of the American Association of the History of Medicine in Kansas City, May 2024.
Read Lauren Small's contributions to American Public Radio's "On Being" blog.
At the heart of Lauren Small's soaring new novel is a murder mystery set in Baltimore in 1918, and the love of two remarkable women. Psychologist Josie Berenson defends a young Black man who has confessed to murder while her partner, Dr. Nell Winters confronts an influenza epidemic that rapidly kills thousands. Their search for justice and healing is complicated by a city riven by race, at a time when loving a member of your own sex is a crime. The path forward, they discover, is fraught with difficulty, but still offers reasons for hope. Delivered by a master story-teller, The Hanging of Ruben Ashford reveals fault lines in a great American city that still reverberate today.
From Ethics Press in 2023, The Eye Begins to See tells the story of Dr. Leo Alexander, Viennese psychiatrist and Jewish war refugee, who returns to Nuremberg after the war to aid the American prosecution in their case against Karl Brandt and other Nazi doctors who committed medical war crimes.
Nearly a century ago, rival approaches to psychiatry fractured the profession. The Grand Argument is far from over. An article by Lavinia Edmunds and Lauren Small in Johns Hopkins Magazine.
Forthcoming from BrickHouse books in the spring of 2025: Radegonde and the First Crusade. In the dead of winter in 1096, a young seamstress from northern France embarks on a most improbable journey: a trek across Europe to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem. Swept up into the First Crusade, Radegonde and her companions—a formerly enslaved African, a Jew, a runaway monk, and a Muslim—encounter the violence and cruelty of war, but also love, forgiveness, and hope. Radegonde and the First Crusade gives voice to women whose stories are so often overlooked in accounts of the past, and brings to life a pivotal moment in history when ordinary people, by transforming themselves, transformed the world.
For over a decade, AfterWards, a program in narrative medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, co-founded by Dr. Lauren Small, has brought literature, writing, and the arts to clinicians of all kinds. Dr. Small also co-teaches an elective in narrative medicince to pediatric residents.