Damian Tarnopolsky is Creative Lead at the Narrative-Based Medicine Lab (NBM Lab) and co-instructor for the Foundational Certificate in Narrative-Based Medicine.
His introduction to NBM came at Massey College, where as the Barbara Moon/Ars Medica Editorial Fellow, he taught creative and reflective writing to medical students and residents. After earning his Narrative Healthcare Certificate with the Health, Arts and Humanities program at the University of Toronto, he taught courses in narrative competence at the Centre for Faculty Development at St. Michael’s Hospital, and ran A Rooster for Asclepius, a health-related writing group. He helped start the Narrative-Based Medicine certificate program at Continuing Professional Development and then led The Mudroom, a creative writing workshop for healthcare practitioners, and was subsequently a key participant in founding the Narrative-Based Medicine Lab. As well as teaching, he helps lead the Lab’s creative program, including community events and website content.
His most recent book, Every Night I Dream I’m A Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m A Monster, a collection of linked short stories, was praised as “one of the most intriguing, original pieces of fiction you are liable to read this year” in Quill and Quire and selected as a Book of the Year by the Hamilton Review of Books. His work has also been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Journey Prize, and the CBC Literary Award, and he was awarded the Voaden Prize for Playwriting in 2019 for his play The Defence.
Damian studied modern literature at Oxford University and writing at the Humber School for Writers, where he was mentored by Mavis Gallant. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, where he specialized in the later modernist novel and was awarded the President’s Teaching Academy award. His articles and reviews have appeared in the national press and online in such publications as The Walrus, TheLiterary Review of Canada, and The Globe and Mail, and for a time he was the volunteer Managing Editor of the Toronto Review of Books.