Illness affects us all; we are called on to support and care for loved ones who face health challenges, and in turn, we encounter our own physical and emotional frailties when our health declines. Body & Soul features inspiring and award-winning fiction, essays, memoirs, poetry, photography, and visual art on the universal themes of wellness, treatment, and healing.

Told from the points of view of patients, practitioners, caregivers, families, and friends, Body & Soul provides a powerful literary perspective on how we are challenged, bewildered, changed, and uplifted by our encounters with change, illness, and disease. Readers will appreciate the richness, depth, and diversity of these healing stories and will become motivated to generate and share their own transformative narratives.

Together with the online discussion guide (providing questions relating to selected pieces in the anthology), Body & Soul is an ideal text for courses and support groups as well as individual reflection. Students and practitioners from all clinical disciplines and scholars in the humanities and social sciences will find this text invaluable.

Allison Crawford is an Associate professor at the University of Toronto, and a psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. She also has a PhD in English literature. Allison was born in Toronto, Canada, and has Scottish and Irish ancestry. She has worked for many years in Nunavut and across the circumpolar north. She is interested in the use of the arts as a means of creating community and providing healing and wellness.

Allison Crawford's profile page

Rex Kay is a founding editor of Ars Medica.

Rex Kay's profile page

Allan D. Peterkin is Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the University of Toronto where he heads the Program in Health, Arts and Humanities. He is the author of 14 books for adults and children including Staying Human during Residency Training (University of Toronto Press) now in its sixth edition

Allan D. Peterkin's profile page

Robin Rogers is a founding editor of Ars Medica.

Robin Roger's profile page

Ronald Ruskin is a psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital, and associate professor and training and supervising analyst at Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. He has co-edited texts on psychotherapy supervision, as well as on humanities and medicine, such as his 2011 book Body and Soul. He is a founding editor of Ars Medica, a medical-humanities journal, published over forty-five stories in literary and medical journals, and written a thriller entitled The Last Panic, and The Analyst Who Laughed to Death, the tragic-comic story of a tormented analyst who never escaped childhood.

Ronald Ruskin's profile page

Aaron Orkin is an associate editor at Ars Medica.

Aaron Orkin's profile page

‘I read stories that moved me, stories with humour, stories that made my eyes moist…This book is a wonderful learning tool not just for practitioners, but for everyone. It is also a joy to read. Buy it.’

Medical Humanities Journal, December 2012