Editor's Foreword

With this issue of Literature and Medicine, I have the privilege and honor of thanking Catherine Belling, Rita Charon, Anne Hudson Jones, and Maura Spiegel for inviting me to be the journal's next Executive Editor. I will draw from the stellar examples of their past stewardship for guidance. I look forward to working with the Associate Editors and Contributing Editors, whose counsel and wisdom I have already come to rely upon. I am thrilled to announce a new Associate Editor, Lorenzo Servitje, who is an Assistant Professor of Literature and Medicine at Lehigh University. Anna Fenton-Hathaway will continue on as Managing Editor; I cannot imagine embarking on this journey without her wit, patience, and diplomacy. My gratitude also goes to the authors whose work appears in this issue, the first under my watch.

And finally, I want to acknowledge Suzanne Poirier, the journal's Executive Editor from 1994 to 2000, whose contributions to the field of medical humanities changed the course of my career. I still remember coming across an essay of hers early in my dissertation and seeing for the first time a different avenue for scholarship and teaching. In 2017, when I joined the Department of Medical Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I stepped into the faculty position Suzanne held when she composed that essay. I thank her for forging a path to such riches.