The Accidental Mind

When I wrote The Accidental Mind, I  didn't give up my day job.  I wrote it during a blissful sabbatical year in Cambridge, England.  As I struggled with the writing it was a huge relief to know that, even if I crashed and burned trying to write the damn book, I could just go back to my life and continue running my lab at Johns Hopkins.  My old pal Jan Steckel, was much braver.  She gave up her thriving practice in pediatrics to write full time and we are all the richer for it.  She writes poems and stories that are deep and wise and sad and occasionally hilarious.  A sometimes-magical-realist, I think of her as the Gabriel Garcia Márquez of Oakland, California.  She has just published her first poetry chapbook called The Underwater Hospital and you can read the title poem here.