“Kinship Medicine” author Wendy Johnson, MD, MPH in conversation with Robin McLean at Fact & Fiction

KINSHIP MEDICINE: Cultivating Interdependence to Heal the Earth and Ourselves is based in the premise that our well-being is rooted in relationships and connection–with each other and the natural world. Western medicine sees our bodies as machines to be repaired, but a more apt metaphor would be a garden, we are a part of nature. Your body itself is an ecosystem, existing inside progressively larger ecosystems until we consider the whole earth itself. We cannot be truly healthy when those ecosystems are sick and dying. Our modern way of living in most of the Western World is incompatible with maintaining the healthy ecosystems on which we depend. KINSHIP MEDICINE is aimed at raising awareness of the deep connection between our well being and the health of the natural world.

Dr. Wendy Johnson is a family physician, public health professor, activist and writer who has spent her life advocating for a world where everyone can live long lives in equitable communities. Her career includes stints scaling up HIV treatment in Mozambique, overseeing and urban health department, and most recently, directing a community clinic in Santa Fe. She has a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins and hold faculty appointments at the University of Washington and the Universtiy of New Mexico. She currently practices family and addiction medicine in rural Northern New Mexico with El Centro Family Health. Dr. Johnson has been a vocal activist on many progressive issues locally and globally and is a two time TEDx speaker.

Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her first story collection Reptile House won the BOA Editions Fiction Prize, was twice a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize, and was noted as a best book of 2015 in Paris Review. Her debut novel Pity the Beast was published Nov. 2o21 by And Other Stories was noted as a best book of fiction of the year in such outlets as The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, White Review, and long-listed for the Reading the West Prize. It was a recommended paperback in the NYTimes in Nov 2022. Her second story collection, Get’em Young, Treat’em Tough, Tell’em Nothing was published by And Other Stories in Oct. 2022, was an Editors’ Choice in the NY Times, and was longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize.

Related Events

• 

  Culture Crawl in Downtown Hamilton

  July 11 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
• 

  Culture Crawl in Downtown Hamilton

  August 8 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
• 

  Culture Crawl in Downtown Hamilton

  September 12 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm