&Now 2015: Blast Radius

The mind generates every word we write. The mind is housed in the body. The body aches, and suffers. The art of medicine heals the body. The art of literature heals the mind. How is fiction altered when the various organs of the body, such as the brain, or the body in its corporeality and bareness, become central "characters" and begin to control and navigate the narrative? Can art and medicine coexist with another when one is deemed as "fiction" and the other as "real," the latter stemming from objective observations and physiological data? Is it the confluence of such an interaction that creates eccentric literature and gives it lungs to breathe, a heart to beat, and a brain to think, and allow it to become more than an "art"?

And from the confluence of these arts, the most eccentric literature emerges. This panel, consisting of a psychiatrist, a neurologist, and a family physician, will address these questions and explore how a medical perspective can, and must indeed, question and alter a traditional narrative that does not address a body in its physiological and psychological underpinnings, and allow literature to become "eccentric," or, in other words, "real."