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Presenter Bios for the Physician Health Services Tribute Event to Michael Palmer, MD

Matthew, Daniel, and Luke Palmer

Matthew, Daniel, and Luke Palmer are the sons of Michael Palmer, MD. Daniel was the first to follow in his father’s footsteps as a professional writer; he recently released his fourth novel. Matthew, an employee of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service, released his first novel in June. Luke is taking a different direction and pursuing comedy, theater, and film in New York.

Samuel Shem (Stephen Bergman, MD, DPhil, Oxon), Co-Author

Samuel Shem, pen name of Stephen Bergman, is a doctor, novelist, playwright and activist. A Rhodes scholar, he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for three decades. Shem has been described in the press as “easily the finest and most important writer ever to focus on the lives of doctors and the world of medicine”, and “he brings mercy to the practice of medicine.” The Lancet called The House of God “one of the two most significant medical novels of the 20th century”. His 2008 novel, The Spirit of the Place, about a primary care doctor in a small town, won the National Best Book Award 2008 in General Fiction and Literature from USA Book News and the Independent Publishers National Book Award in Literary Fiction 2009. His other medical novels include Mount Misery and Fine.

As a playwright, he co-wrote Bill W. and Dr. Bob with his wife Janet Surrey; this Off Broadway hit about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous won the Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism 2007. This long-running Off Broadway play has also been produced all over the country. In addition, two of his Off Off Broadway plays were published in The Best Short Plays anthologies.

Besides novels and plays, Shem also collaborated with Surrey on the nonfiction book We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues Between Women And Men, winner of the Boston Interfaith Council’s Paradigm Shift Award in 1999. He has also given more than 50 commencement speeches on “How to Stay Human in Medicine,” including one given in 2009 at his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Shem and Surrey live in Boston and Costa Rica. Website: www.samuelshem.com

Janet Surrey, Co-Author, PhD

Janet Surrey is a clinical psychologist, author, Buddhist teacher, and founding scholar of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at Wellesley College. She is co-author of Women’s Growth in Connection and Mothering against the Odds, as well as other nonfiction books that deal with women’s relational psychology, addiction, and spirituality. She was a faculty member of Harvard University for many years, and she is now a member of the Institute of Meditation and Psychology in Boston. She collaborated with her husband, Samuel Shem, on the play Bill W. And Dr. Bob, and the nonfiction book We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues between Women and Men, which won the 1999 Paradigm Shift Award of the Boston Interfaith Council; they also collaborated on a curriculum, Making Connections: Building Gender Dialogue and Community in Secondary Schools in 2006. Known for her writing and speaking all over the world, she recently completed a training program to be a community dharma leader. She and Shem live in Boston and Costa Rica.

Mark Vonnegut

Mark Vonnegut is an author and pediatrician; he was also a friend and traveling companion of Michael’s.

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