"I am grateful to the Reilly Center for providing me a month at the University of Notre Dame as Writer-in-Residence, which was productive and peaceful. The Storozynski Residential Writing Fellowship allowed me to spend time on a beautiful campus and make use of the university's library and Reilly Center, and meet faculty and students engaged with the intersection of health, medicine, and writing. I received the fellowship at a critical time when I needed the space and time to fall into the deep contemplation necessary for writing my own work and it helped me push my project forward."
- Cleo Qian, Storozynski Writer in Residence (Spring '25)
The Storozynski Writing Fellowship supports emerging writers whose work engages with physical or mental illness, healthcare, disability, the body, and related subjects.
The Fellowship is sponsored by the Health, Humanities, and Society (
HHS), a Reilly Center program, in cooperation with the
Creative Writing program. This undergraduate course of study introduces students, many of them pre-health, to new perspectives on health and wellness through the lenses of the humanities and the social sciences. Since the inception of HHS, narrative medicine, and literature and medicine more broadly, has been one important component that encourages students to reflect on their own experiences as patients, caregivers, and aspiring medical professionals, with the ultimate goal of deepening their understanding of the role reading and writing play in the development of curiosity, empathy, and advocacy.
Our first Storozynski Fellow was
Noga Arikha, who was in residence at Notre Dame after the publication of her book
The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind, a book that wove together close observation of neuropsychiatry patients at a Paris hospital, with a memoir of her mother's unexpected decline into Alzheimer's, and treatment at the same hospital. During her residency, Noga spent time with students in HHS and other programs, with graduate students in Creative Writing and other disciplines, and with faculty from both science and the liberal arts. The University Bookstore celebrated her book with a launch and public conversation.
Our second Storozynski Fellow was
Emily Maloney, whose essay collection
Cost of Living moves from the intensely personal, to a devastating portrait of the brokenness of the US healthcare system.
Cleo Qian, whose debut work
LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO touches on the surreal and unsettling stories of Asian and Asian American women and the roles that society and technology play in relation to the body and mind.
Joan Reilly is an author and illustrator whose work delves into the genre of graphic medicine. Her current project is a graphic memoir exploring her experiences with her diagnosis of brain cancer and its treatment. Her graphic novel
Among the Liberal Elite follows a couple's cross country roadtrip across America to gain a better understanding of their country and fellow citizens.
For our fourth year of the Storozynski Fellowship we will be welcoming
Holly G. Thompson, a poet whose work touches on neurodivergency, disability studies, and health humanities.
Storozyski Fellows are invited to engage with our HHS and Creative Writing students and faculty. But the primary purpose of the Fellowship is to give writers the space, time, and resources to work on their projects, and any other commitments are kept to a very modest level.