SLCL Medical Series Event - Meghan O’Rourke on “The Invisible Kingdom” of Chronic Illness

St. Louis County Library and the JCC of St. Louis are pleased to host an SLCL Authors @ the J event with Meghan O’Rourke, National Book Award-nominated author of “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness.” The event is presented by the Arthur Gale Medical Arts Lecture Series.

The event will take place on Monday, March 6, at 7:00 p.m. at the JCC’s Staenberg Family Center – Mirowitz Performing Arts Center, 2 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis, MO 63146.

The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from Left Bank Books.

A finalist for the 2022 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, “The Invisible Kingdom” is a landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and mysterious issues of our time: the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases

A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: these are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.
 
Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. And as America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color.
 
Blending lyricism, candor and empathy, O’Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. 

MEGHAN O’ROURKE is the author of “The Long Goodbye” and three poetry collections. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and other awards, she is the editor of The Yale Review. Her writing appears in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and more.

The Arthur Gale Medical Arts Lecture Series at the St. Louis County Library was founded in 2015 by Dr. Arthur Gale with the purpose of increasing the public's knowledge and understanding of medicine and health care.

Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.