Louise the doctor is a practicing geriatrician and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). A graduate of Harvard Medical School, she has served as director of the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center, the UCSF Pathways to Discovery program, and currently leads the campus-wide Health Humanities and Social Advocacy Initiative. She has received awards including California Homecare Physician of the Year, the Gold Professorship in Humanism in Medicine, and American Geriatrics Society Clinician-Teacher of the Year. Her scholarly articles have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, Health Affairs, Medical Education, Academic Medicine, Medical Teacher, JGIM, STAT News, Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and JAMA.

Louise the writer is a graduate of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and the author of articles, essays and stories that explore the intersection of medicine and life. Her first book, A History of the Present Illness, was a finalist for both the Chautauqua Prize and the PEN America debut fiction award. Her second book, the New York Times non-fiction bestseller, Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, and Reimagining Life, was released to starred reviews and national media attention in June 2019. It has been described as “stunning, extraordinary,” “beautiful, enormous in scope,” and “sophisticated, nuanced beyond almost anything.” Her writing has been featured on National Public Radio and in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative Magazine, New England Review, Discover Magazine, and Bellevue Literary Review. She has earned 4 Pushcart nominations and a MacDowell Colony fellowship.

Louise the person is a fifth-generation San Franciscan who was born at the same medical center where she now works, a fact that sometimes leads her to comment that she hasn’t gone very far in life, just down fifteen floors and over a building or two. As a child she hoped to become either the next Max Perkins, the Scribner editor of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, or a professional basketball player – a dream doomed from the start by her vertical, visual, and coordination challenges. Once a History and Anthropology major, she chose a career in medicine in hopes of improving human lives and was well into her career when she discovered that she could be at least as useful with a pen or keyboard as with a prescription pad and stethoscope. She lives on one of San Francisco’s fourteen steep hills with her family.