Bonnie is an outpatient palliative care doctor at Kaiser Permanente Oakland, where she is grateful to hear daily the stories of her patients’ lives – the profound and the mundane. She lives with her husband and 16-month old son, who have helped her develop a new appreciation for sleep, giggling, and Cheerios.

Catherine has been a family medicine physician for 25 years. Like all primary care docs, she revels in the privilege of hearing peoples' stories.  Catherine writes every day, although only her muses have seen her prolific textkus (cell phone photo, haiku written, whoosh texted). She has raised kids and raised h*ll for her patients.  To her surprise, she was honored with the CAFP ‘Hero of Family Medicine’ in 2013 and is still trying to earn it.

Julie is a hospitalist and palliative care physician in the East Bay. She went to medical school to earn the right to ask patients to tell their stories. Clamoring for her attention (in addition to medicine):  parenting, modern dance, cooking, and multiple unfinished craft projects.

Bill is affectionately known as the “Hugging Doc.” He was the Medical Director of the Chemical Dependency Services at Mills-Peninsula Hospital from 1981 until 2012. He has written and lectured on the “Healing Power of Love” and “Hugging and the Immune System.” After 47 years, he is still seeing patients in San Mateo County.

A New Yorker by birth and Californian at heart, Matt is finishing his last year of training as a psychiatrist in San Francisco. When not working with patients and conducting research, he enjoys writing, road biking, choral singing, and cooking.

Bill is a Yale-trained cardiovascular surgeon, who practiced as a combat surgeon in Vietnam, and practiced for 30 years in Iowa. Now retired, he has volunteered as a surgeon in Haiti, Russia, and China. He is a flight instructor and writer, having published 15 short stories and recently completed a novel, called A Long Way From Home (A Soldier's Story).

Winnie Nieh, soprano, graduated from Harvard and received associate diplomas from Trinity College London in piano, violin and voice. She has appeared as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Austrian Embassy in D.C., as well as in Germany, Canada, South Korea and Hong Kong. Please visit www.winnienieh.com for more information.

Lekshmi is a third-year pulmonology and critical care medicine fellow at UCSF interested in medical education, palliative care, and advocacy. She grew up all over the world and can thus sneakily claim allegiance to multiple sports teams. She loves traveling, hiking, cooking & eating out, and doing all these activities with her baby girl in tow. She tweets @LekshmiMD.

Matt is a third-year internal medicine resident at UCSF. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he came to San Francisco after college at Harvard and medical school at Brown. He is an active chamber musician and plays with UCSF's chamber orchestra, Strings Collaborative.

Joe is a graduate of the UCSF emergency medicine residency and was a Poe/Faulkner fellow at the University of Virginia where he received his MFA in fiction. He works in the Bay Area and in Humboldt County. 

Jenny is a first year medical student at Stanford, former professional letterpress printmaker, and current dilettante fly fisherwoman. Jenny grew up in the sticks in Montana and therefore can make an old-fashioned pie and apologize for things that are not her fault.