5 New books from dotMD featured authors

If you’re a doctor and you haven’t yet written that book you always said you would, you better a get a move on. This year already will see the announcement of publication of 4 books by doctors who just happen to do ‘a bit of writing’ as well. And it’s only March.

dotMD speaker and regular attendee Prof Brendan Kelly has just published a new book called ’The Doctor Who Sat For a Year‘. The book takes the form of a diary documenting the challenges of learning to meditate while competing with the conflicting demands of a stressful clinical and academic job, a writing and broadcast career, and family life. The Doctor Who Sat For a Year, which manages to blend Buddhism, Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Film, Theatre and Ralph Waldo Emerson is also a very funny introduction to meditation for people who think they’re too busy to meditate (or to write a book).

January saw the publication of a graphic novel called The Lady Doctor written by GP and founder of the Graphic Medicine movement, Dr. Ian Williams. The book is a hilarious follow up to to Ian’s first book ’The Bad Doctor’ – which was a big hit at dotMD when Ian spoke at the conference in 2016. It documents the life and times of Lois Pritchard a GP as she tries to negotiate the sometimes overwhelming difficulties of dealing with challenging and demanding patients, difficult work colleagues, addictions (those of her patients – and a few of her own) and a hilariously chaotic love life.
Ian will be curating an exhibition of Graphic Medicine at this dotMD 2019 which will take place on the 13th and 14th September in Galway.

Dr. Lucia Gannon, dotMD regular and popular Medical Independent columnist will also publish a book of medical memoirs called “All in A Doctors Life” in April. The book describes her life as she builds a practice in the tight knit community of a small village of Killenaule, Co. Tipperary over 20 years. The book will be published by Gill Books (who also publish Brendan Kelly’s book) on April 19th

Its has also just been announced that Dr. Rachel Clarke, dotMD 2018 speaker and author of ‘Your Life In My Hands’, her hugely successful memoir about her life as junior doctor in the NHS, will publish a new book in 2020. The book will be called ‘Dear Life’ and is an account of her work as a palliative care doctor at a National Health Service hospice, and caring for her ill father. If her recent piece ‘In Life’s Last Moments’ in the New York Times is any indication of things to come, the book will be very well received indeed.

Previous dotMD attendees will be familiar with the work of writer and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson (who read from her Granta published essay Blue Hills and Chalk Bones at dotMD 2017). Sinéad has a new book of essays coming out in April 2019 entitled ‘Constellations’. Constellations tells the story of a body as it goes through sickness, health, and motherhood and has been described by Robert McFarlane as “a glitteringly brilliant” and as “utterly magnificent” by author Eimear McBride. It will be available from April 4th by Picador. We look forward to hearing more from Sinéad at dotMD 2019

Books will be on sale at the Charlie Byrnes Book Stall at dotMD 2019. Don’t forget to support you local independent book shop!