Laurel Braitman

“[Laurel Braitman] has the rare gift of being able to combine ideas, research and personal experience into a compelling narrative.”

— Amitav Ghosh, award-winning author of Sea of Poppies

Laurel Braitman is the Director of Writing and Storytelling at the Stanford School of Medicine, as well as the New York Times bestselling author of Animal Madness and her memoir What Looks Like Bravery. In the Medicine and the Muse program at Stanford, she works with medical students and professionals to reintroduce the power of storytelling to the healthcare field. She’s seen firsthand how telling your own story—“flying your flag”—can relieve stress, avert burnout, strengthen resilience, and empower you to build connections based on authenticity and vulnerability. In her workshops, she teaches doctors and frontline workers writing skills that they use to make meaning and find beauty even in the toughest moments of their careers. The practical skills and lessons she teaches enable us to develop better mental health, heal ourselves and one another, and build communities that rally together with compassion and authenticity.

Laurel’s memoir What Looks Like Bravery is a powerful look at how unexamined grief can persist over decades. Through the lens of her own life, and a childhood spent worrying about her father with cancer, Laurel sensitively and honestly explores how confronting our grief can help us live the life we really want, and how the pain of loss can transform us into the people we want to become. “Evocative and clear-eyed . . . Just as Eat Pray Love and Wild inspired millions, this book will send countless readers on a different—yet no less life-changing or profound—pilgrimage, as it did for me.” (Samin Nosrat, New York Times bestselling author)

Her previous book, the New York Times bestseller Animal Madness, is a “lovely, big-hearted book” (The New York Times) investigating mental illness in the animal kingdom—from anxious dogs to depressed bears. Susan Orlean, bestselling author of The Orchid Thief, calls it “a marvelous, smart, eloquent book—as much about human emotion as it is about animals and their inner lives.”

Laurel holds a PhD in Science, Technology and Society from MIT, and is a Senior TED Fellow. She’s the founder of Writing Medicine, a global community of writing healthcare professionals. Her work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Good Morning America, and Al Jazeera. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, on Radiolab, in The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, and National Geographic, among others. She’s worked in Alaska studying grizzly bears, made coffee for the Hell’s Angels, taught backpacking, and volunteered with grieving kids. Laurel splits her time between the remote Alaskan wilderness and her family’s citrus and avocado ranch in Southern California.