Maura Spiegel has been teaching fiction and film at Columbia University and Barnard College for more than 20 years. She also teaches in the M.S. Degree Program in Narrative Medicine and is a Founder and Co-Director of the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she offers a film course to first-year medical students. With Rita Charon, MD, PhD, she was the co-editor-in-chief of the journal Literature and Medicine (Hopkins U.P.) for seven years. She Co-Authored The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying and Living On (Anchor/Doubleday), The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press), and she recently published a biography of the filmmaker Sidney Lumet (St. Martin’s Press). She has written for The New York Times and Newsday, among many other periodicals