Off the Page: Featuring Dr. Suzanne Koven

"Life can feel out of control, formless. Writing has a form that we choose."

For over two decades, I have supported writers as an editor, publicist, and mindfulness-based book coach, at various publishing houses, universities, corporations, and organizations. Through this journey, I’ve discovered that the quality of a writing life extends far beyond merely putting words on a page. It encompasses all the activities we engage in when we’re not writing. This insight inspired me to create Off the Page: Conversations About Writing as a Practice, where I feature writers sharing their diverse routines—from yoga and meditation to walking, reading, and even Olympic weightlifting. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to writing, and there are as many ways to forge a writing life as there are humans on the planet.

This week, I’m honored to feature the luminary author and doctor Suzanne Koven, author of the essay collection Letter to a Young Female Physician (W. W. Norton & Company ). I’m thrilled to join her at the upcoming Care for Caregivers retreat at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, January 24-26. Discover more and here!

ABOUT: Suzanne Koven received her B.A. in English literature from Yale and her M.D. from Johns Hopkins. She also holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. After her residency training and chief residency in medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, she joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and practiced primary care internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital for over 30 years. She is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and holds the Valerie Winchester Family Endowed Chair in Primary Care Medicine at Mass General.  In 2019 she was named inaugural Writer in Residence at Mass General. Her essays, articles, blogs, and reviews have appeared in The Boston Globe, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, NewYorker.com, Psychology Today, The L.A. Review of Books, The Virginia Quarterly, STAT, and other publications. Her monthly column “In Practice” appeared in The Boston Globe and won the Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Writing from the American Medical Writers Association. At HMS Dr. Koven co-created and co-directs the Media and Medicine certificate program at and teaches in the Media, Medicine and Health masters program. She speaks to a wide variety of audiences on literature and medicine and the role of women in medicine. Her essay collection, Letter to a Young Female Physician, was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2021. Her memoir, The Mirror Box, will be published by W.W. Norton in 2026.

Lisa Weinert (LW): How is writing a healing practice?

Suzanne Koven (SK) There’s a lot of research, much of it pioneered by psychologist James W. Pennebaker at UT-Austin, showing that the act of writing just 15 minutes a day can benefit health in measurable ways: improved lab values, fewer urgent care visits, fewer flares of certain chronic diseases. Also, I think most people who write, myself included, would say that writing, particularly writing about scary material–and is there any other material worth writing about?--makes it less scary, less confusing.

LW: How is writing healing?  

SK: There are many analogies to be made between writing and psychotherapy, especially for writers of personal essay and memoir. As in therapy, a writer can find a new story about her own life, one that feels truer and more self-contained than some of the chaotic, unexamined stories we all walk around with and that cause suffering. Life can feel out of control, formless. Writing has a form that we choose.

LW: What is the difference between “traditional writing” and “writing with a healing intention?

SK: If by “traditional writing” you mean writing for publication vs. journaling just for yourself with a healing intention then the intention itself is the difference. But I don’t think it’s necessarily a meaningful difference since writing for publication, finding truth and clarity about a subject, is healing. I have, at times, resisted the idea that writing is therapeutic–I’m making art here!--but it is. Profoundly so.

LW: What role does movement play in your writing life? Do you return to any somatic practices, mindfulness exercises, or other rituals before or after you write?

SK: I find that walking loosens my associations, loosens my grip on my preconceived notions, relieves (somewhat) my perfectionism. Also showering, weeding the garden. My best ideas like to sneak up on me when I’m not looking for them.

LW: What role does meditation play in your creative life?

SK: I don’t have a formal meditation practice, but I do rise very early and just sit and think while I have my morning coffee. This is my favorite time of day. Second favorite is when I get in bed at night and lie down and think. Do these count as meditation?

LW: Where do you find inspiration?

SK: My number one source of inspiration is reading. Other writers’ bravery, inventiveness, and sometimes just the beauty of their language emboldens me. Sometimes I literally have a book open on my lap while I’m writing, so I can borrow some of another writer’s courage by osmosis.

LW: How has sharing your work changed your life?

SK: What a great question. The best part of writing is when you struggle and struggle to find the right way to tell a story and you finally hit paydirt–you’ve said the truest thing you can say– and you just know it. The second best part is when you hear from readers who have responded to that truth. Those emails that say: your book really spoke to me. That’s when you know that all your weird, idiosyncratic thoughts–thoughts you worried made no sense– are not only true for you, they’re true for others as well. Readers’ responses give me confidence in my own ideas and also make me feel more connected to other people, most of them strangers.

LW: What writers have influenced you the most?

SK: Too many to pick the “most” but physician-writers Oliver Sacks and Richard Selzer as well as patient-memoirists such as Audre Lorde, Lucy Grealy, and so many others expanded my view of how one might write about illness and caregiving. Sacks and Selzer also taught me that doctors who write don’t need to be entirely noble and “doctorly” on the page, that I could engage my doubts and foibles.

LW: What book are you excited to read next?

SK: My TBR pile currently has my bedroom table on the verge of collapse but I try to discipline myself to one at a time, plus an audiobook. I’m currently reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories and listening to Tana French’s The Searcher. Very different writers, very different books. But great storytelling is great storytelling.

LW: Is there anything else you’d like us to know?

SK: As I get older I find reading and writing more and more pleasurable and necessary. Stories are balms for anxiety about ourselves and about the state of the world. And the funny thing is, the more difficult and challenging a story is to write or to read, the more healing it is.