As we end our 2014 publication cycle, we are delighted to honor the winners of the annual William Carlos Williams Medical Student Poetry Competition and to share their verse in this special theme issue of the journal. They are:

  • Amy Steinberg who is now a second-year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco. Amy received a degree in English from Stanford University where she developed an interest in writing short fiction and poetry. In medical school, she writes that “creative writing has provided her with a space for processing, refuge, and cheap time-travel.” Her poem, “Starving on the North Side of McClure Pass,” placed first in this year’s competition.

  • Celeste Lipkes who is now a second-year student at the Medical College of Virginia. Celeste studied poetry and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University before pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at the University of Virginia. In her free time, she is working on a collection of poems, which she describes as a “welcome antidote to the stacks of anatomy textbooks.” Her poem, “Second Place,” placed second in the competition.

  • Alyse Marie Carlson who is now a second-year medical student at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. Originally from Centennial, Colorado, Alyse attended Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where she majored in biology and minored in English. She writes as often as possible during medical school and focuses mostly on poetry and personal narrative. Her poem, “These Iowa Fields,” placed third.

In addition to the poetry of the three medical student winners, we also feature two special essays in this issue: one by a current medical student, Moises Enghelberg, on medicine as aesthetic and the performative nature of the physical examination and the second by a resident, Ray De Silva, on what the time-honored tradition of the “class play” in medical schools and residency programs reveal about the institutions in which they are created and enacted.

On behalf of the editorial board of JMH, I congratulate all of these young colleagues. We look forward to publishing and reading their work in future issues.