by Writing Workshops Staff
A month ago
"$149.57 is going to have to feed my family indefinitely."
That's the opening reality of Elizabeth Austin's essay in today's New York Times Opinion section—a number that was supposed to carry her family until November 9th, but now, with SNAP benefits suspended during the government shutdown, must stretch for who knows how long.
It's the kind of sentence that stops you cold. Precise. Devastating. Impossible to look away from.
But here's what makes Elizabeth's piece more than just powerful journalism: it's narrative medicine in action.
The Art of Making the Invisible Visible
In her essay, Elizabeth takes us from Saturday mornings at the Wrightstown Farmers Market—where donor-funded programs transform her $60 in SNAP benefits into $80 in Market Bucks for Kirby cucumbers, fresh sourdough, and grass-fed yogurt—back to 2012, when those same benefits meant "boxes of generic pasta and sauce, bulk rice, day-old breads and pastries, and bags of bruised or wilting produce marked down for quick sale."
The contrast isn't just about food. It's about dignity, shame, and survival. It's about pulling a floral-patterned benefits card from your wallet while feeling "as if a blanket of shame lay over my shoulders." It's about the gap between keeping children fed and feeding them healthfully.
This is what narrative medicine does: it transforms abstract policy debates into lived human experience. It makes us feel the weight of $149.57. It shows us exactly what food insecurity looks like—not in statistics, but in day-old bread and bruised produce.
And Elizabeth Austin is a master at it.
Learning From Someone Who's Lived It—And Writes It Brilliantly
Elizabeth's background gives her a rare combination of lived experience and craft. She's written for TIME, Harper's Bazaar, McSweeney's, and Ms. Magazine. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She's survived her daughter's three-year battle with leukemia while struggling with alcoholism—experiences she's transforming into a forthcoming memoir. And she's lived more than a decade navigating SNAP benefits while raising two children alone after their father disappeared without warning.
She knows how to tell the stories that policy debates miss. She knows how to write about poverty, illness, and survival without losing the humanity in the details. She understands that the right story, told the right way, can create understanding where statistics alone cannot.
On Saturday, November 8th, she's teaching Understanding Through Stories: An Introduction to Narrative Medicine Writing, a two-hour intensive that will teach you the same techniques she uses in her most powerful work.
What You'll Learn
In this workshop, you'll discover:
How to craft illness and hardship narratives that honor complexity without sacrificing emotional truth—the skill Elizabeth demonstrates when she contrasts her farmers market Saturdays with those early years of stretching $383 across bruised produce and day-old bread
Practical narrative medicine techniques including parallel process writing and reflective observation exercises that help healthcare professionals, writers, and anyone processing difficult experiences transform private struggle into stories that create understanding and connection
Three complete narrative pieces you'll create during the session, using the same foundational approaches that allowed Elizabeth to write about food insecurity with such devastating precision
The seminar combines theoretical foundations (including Rita Charon's groundbreaking work) with hands-on writing exercises. You'll explore example texts, engage in guided writing, and leave with strategies for incorporating storytelling into your professional practice or personal healing journey.
From Shame to Story
What makes Elizabeth's Times essay so powerful isn't just what she reveals about SNAP benefits—it's how she reveals it. The specific details. The emotional honesty. The ability to move between personal narrative and larger policy implications without losing either thread.
These are teachable skills. And you can learn them from the writer who just demonstrated them on one of the nation's biggest stages.
The session meets live via Zoom on Saturday, November 8th from 2:00-4:00 PM Eastern (and will be recorded if you can't attend live). Tuition is just $75.
If Elizabeth's essay moved you today—if that $149.57 has stayed with you, if you can't stop thinking about the contrast between Market Bucks and day-old bread—imagine what you could learn from spending two hours studying the craft behind it.
Register for Elizabeth Austin's Narrative Medicine Workshop →
Read Elizabeth's New York Times essay "$149.57 Is Going to Have to Feed My Family Indefinitely" to see narrative medicine at its finest—then join us to learn how to write stories that make the invisible visible, that transform policy into humanity, that create understanding where there was only judgment.
