Distributed March 21, 2002
For Immediate Release

News Service Contact: Mary Jo Curtis



2002 Sheridan Lecture

Author Andrew Solomon to speak April 3 on depression

Andrew Solomon, author of the award-winning The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, will give the 10th annual Harriet W. Sheridan Literature and Medicine Lecture on Wednesday, April 3, 2002, at 4 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching on The College Green. This event, which is dedicated to Drs. Stanley and Betty Aronson, is free and open to the public.


PROVIDENCE —Award-winning author Andrew Solomon will deliver the 10th annual Harriet W. Sheridan Literature and Medicine Lecture on Wednesday, April 3, 2002, at 4 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching. He will speak on "Depression, Too, is a Thing with Feathers."

SolomonThe author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (Scribner, 2001) and various other publications, Solomon has lectured on depression around the world and has worked on behalf of Tipper Gore's National Mental Health Awareness Campaign. The Noonday Demon, an examination of depression from personal, cultural and scientific perspectives, was named the winner of the 2001 National Book Award and spent several weeks on the bestseller lists of The New York Times and in London; it has been published in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, and is due to be published in 19 other languages within the next two years.

"Depression is an important public issue, and Solomon's book goes a long way in removing the stigma of mental illness and increasing the understanding of depression," said Lynn Epstein, M.D., associate dean of medicine in the Brown Medical School and organizer of the annual Sheridan Lecture. "Andrew Solomon fosters the kind of dialogue we need on this subject."

Born in New York, Solomon studied at Yale University and Jesus College at Cambridge University. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and has written for The New Yorker. He is the author of A Stone Boat (Faber, 1994) and The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost (Knopf, 1991), and has contributed to numerous other books and periodicals.

The Sheridan Lecture offers the community nationally recognized speakers who explore the writings of physicians, narratives from patients and families, and stories of mental illness. Past lecturers have included novelists William Styron and Samuel Shem (the pen name of Stephen J. Bergman, M.D.), poet physician Dannie Abse, and Suzanne Poirier, the editor of Literature and Medicine, among others.

Harriet W. Sheridan, who died in 1992, was a dean of the College and professor of English at Brown. The Sheridan Lecture, which honors her, is the first endowed lectureship in literature and medicine at a medical school. Each year the lecture is dedicated to someone who epitomizes the spirit of Sheridan; this year's honorees are Drs. Stanley and Betty Aronson.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For further information, call (401) 863-1140.

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