In this episode, Meghan O’Rourke, poet, author and editor of The Yale Review, speaks frankly about pursuing a creative and professional life with chronic illness. Joining Lauren Wetmore in conversation, and following a reading from Susan Sontag’s pivotal text “Illness as a Metaphor” (The New York Review of Books, 1979), which O’Rourke updated for the 21st century with her medical memoir The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead Books, 2022), O’Rourke speaks to how “The way you make work might not look as consistent as a kind of late-capitalist notion of productivity insists.” She also touches on her experiences as a critic and editor of criticism, insisting that both require one to be “capable of generosity and describing love.”

Thanks to this episode’s sponsor, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts), for their support of our work.

Thanks to Meghan O’Rourke for her contribution to this season.

And thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.