NBM Lab Creative Lead Damian Tarnopolsky joined writers Ronna Bloom and Elizabeth Ruth for a wide-ranging discussion on “The Medicine of Words: On Narrative and Healing” at the Word on the Street Festival in Toronto back in September 2025. Moderated by Cathy Gordon from Luminato Festival, the conversation touched on some key questions about health and literature.

Initially, Damian set out the Lab’s approach to narrative-based medicine and its connections to his own creative practice, as in the writing of his short story collection, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster (Freehand Books, 2024).

The presence and absence of patient voices in health writing was another key topic, as Elizabeth Ruth discussed her powerful new poetry collection This Report is Strictly Confidential (Caitlin Press & Dagger Editions, 2024). which is based on archival research into her aunt’s experience in an infamous Ontario residential hospital.

Elaborating on the role of institutions and our attempts to make them more human and more humane, Ronna Bloom shared the many vital ways that she makes poetry available in hospitals and other health spaces and read from her new collection, In a Riptide (Brick Books, 2025).

The conversation concluded with a difficult, essential question: can art truly heal, or does it witness, empower, provoke, or offer different kinds of solace? Both the panelists and audience members continued to discuss it in the lively Q&A that followed.