The Reilly Center has announced the selection of Cleo Qian and Joan Reilly as the Storozynski Writers in Residence for Spring 2025. The Storozynski Writing Fellowship, sponsored by the Health, Humanities, and Society (HHS) program in collaboration with the Creative Writing program, supports emerging writers whose work engages with themes such as physical and mental illness, healthcare, disability, and the body.
The fellowship, now a central part of the Reilly Center’s mission, aligns with the goals of HHS to provide students—many of them on pre-health tracks—with new perspectives on health and wellness through the humanities and social sciences.
Recently HHS has begun emphasizing narrative medicine, encouraging students to reflect on their own experiences as patients, caregivers, and aspiring medical professionals. The fellowship plays a key role in deepening the understanding of how storytelling and literature can foster curiosity, empathy, and advocacy within healthcare.
This year’s Storozynski Writers in Residence are Cleo Qian, a queer fiction writer and poet, and Joan Reilly, an illustrator and comic artist whose works have delved into graphic medicine.
Cleo Qian will be on campus from mid-March to early April. She plans to use her residency to work on Little Bones, her second book of fiction. The novel, a psychological body horror piece, reimagines Dazai Osamu’s post-WWII classic The Setting Sun as a contemporary story about a Chinese-American family in decline, exploring themes of generational trauma, identity, and the disintegration of the American dream.
Joan Reilly will be in residence the month of April. Reilly specializes in graphic medicine, a field that combines comics and visual storytelling to address healthcare-related topics. During her time at Notre Dame, she will work on The Present, a graphic memoir detailing her personal experiences undergoing treatment for brain cancer.
Both writers will also engage with the Notre Dame community through workshops and public readings, providing unique opportunities for students to explore the intersections of healthcare, the humanities, and creative expression.