Allison Coffelt, M.S., M.A.

Allison Coffelt, M.S., M.A. is a lecturer in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University and co-leads the Social Justice in Narrative Medicine working group. Allison comes to narrative medicine and the health humanities by way of creative nonfiction. Her previous work has included community organizing and media literacy programming for a documentary film festival and teaching writing in both university and community contexts.

Her writing and audio production have been featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association, BMJ Medical Humanities, NPR’s KBIA-FM, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the author of Maps Are Lines We Draw: A Road Trip through Haiti, a lyric nonfiction exploration of health equity, colonialism, and the complicated relationship between “here” and “there.” Maps Are Lines We Draw was selected by a jury of journalists for the Society of American Travel Writers gold book award.

Allison earned her M.S. in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and her M.A. in English-Creative Nonfiction from the University of Missouri. A Midwesterner at heart, she now lives along the Wasatch Front in Salt Lake City, Utah.