# Event Details - **Event Name**: Writing about Medicine, Grief, and Loss with Sunita Puri and Erika Hayasaki - **Event Start and End Date**: Thu, 12 Mar, 2026 at 04:00 pm – Thu, 12 Mar, 2026 at 05:30 pm - **Event Description**: In this masterclass, Dr. Sunita Puri and Professor Erika Hayasaki will share their experiences with writing about challenging subjects.About this EventJoin the UC Irvine Center for Storytelling for an engaging conversation with two of the most prominent storytellers in the field of health and medicine. Co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Literary Journalism Program. This event is free and open to the public and all are welcome to attend. For assistance or inquiries, contact Patricia Pierson at piersonp@uci.edu.About our speakers:Dr. Sunita Puri is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, where she is the Director of the Inpatient Palliative Care Service. A 2025 Literature Fellow of the Bogliasco Foundation, she is the author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a critically acclaimed literary memoir examining her journey to the practice of palliative medicine, and her quest to help patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness. A graduate of Yale University and the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship, her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Tricycle, Slate, Wall Street Journal, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, among other places. She and her work have been featured in the Atlantic, People Magazine, PBS’ Christian Amanpour Show, NPR, the Guardian, BBC, India Today, and Literary Hub. In 2019, the Guardian made a mini-documentary of her work with her patients, which has been viewed over 3.5 million times. She has been awarded writing residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Mesa Refuge, and UCross. A sought-after speaker who has delivered lectures around the world, Dr. Puri is passionate about the ways that the precise and compassionate use of language can empower patients and physicians to have the right conversations about living and dying.Erika Hayasaki teaches in the Literary Journalism Program at the University of California, Irvine. She is an independent journalist interested in the intersections of identity, family, science, history, and the human condition.She is the author of The Death Class: A True Story About Life (Simon & Schuster, 2014), and Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity and the Meaning of Family, (Algonquin Books, Hachette, 2022). Somewhere Sisters was named an NPR Best Book of 2022 and received a 2023 Nautilus Book Award in Journalism and Investigative Reporting, honoring books about social and environmental justice.Erika's feature stories appear in The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Wired, The Atlantic, The Cut, The Verge, MIT Technology Review, Slate, The New Republic, The Guardian, Newsweek, Time, Glamour, Elle, InStyle, Marie Claire, Foreign Policy, and others. She is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, where she spent nine years covering breaking news and writing narratives.She was a 2021-2022 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow, researching intersections of Black and Asian American history, and a 2018 Alicia Patterson Fellow in science and environmental reporting. Erika teaches courses on health, medical and science narratives, news feature writing, reporting on identity and social issues, and multimedia storytelling.She has won awards from the Association of Sunday Feature Editors, and the Society for Features Journalism, the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Her science writing has been featured in Longform's Best of Science writing 2016 and 2017, and notably selected in the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2019 and 2022. https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events1/banners/71c60190-1a6f-11f1-addc-399c2b4ffec3-rimg-w1200-h87-dc000000-gmir.png Visit parking.uci.edu for parking options, directions, and information. Suggested parking locations are Mesa Road and Lot 7. Parking in Lot 7 is pay per plate and is $20 per spot.Parking in the Mesa parking structure is $4 per hour or $16 per day. Suggested directions to the Mesa Parking Structure: Coming from University Dr., you’ll drive up Mesa to the Mesa Parking Structure and make a first right and stop at the kiosk. You will need to buy a parking permit from the attendant before proceeding to general parking (upper levels). From the lot, go towards the stairs or elevator on your level to access a footbridge. Follow event signs to the Humanities Gateway(2). HG 1010 is an outside room on the inside curve of the Gateway building. https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events5/banners/71f5c420-1a6f-11f1-9e27-61f09d4cb8ea-rimg-w684-h740-dc75924c-gmir.jpg - **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/irvine/writing-about-medicine-grief-and-loss-with-sunita-puri-and-erika-hayasaki/100001984582459560 - **Event Categories**: Art, literary-art, health-wellness, Nonprofit, Workshops - **Interested Audience**: - total_interested_count: 0 ## Ticket Details - **Ticket Price Range**: min: 0, max: 0, currency: USD ## Event venue details - **city**: Irvine - **state**: CA - **country**: United States - **location**: The Humanities Gateway Building, Room 1010 - **lat**: 33.6471239 - **long**: -117.84213249999999 - **full address**: The Humanities Gateway Building, Room 1010, The UC Irvine School of Humanities, Irvine, United States ## Event gallery - **Alt text**: Writing about Medicine, Grief, and Loss with Sunita Puri and Erika Hayasaki - **Image URL**: https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events8/banners/feba7f36d0024616d6c8ec482d2332c0eb7ed6d4f30a7ce9c680dbafe7906c1e-rimg-w1024-h768-dcfbf4e4-gmir.jpg?v=1772920228 ## FAQs - **Q**: When and where is Writing about Medicine, Grief, and Loss with Sunita Puri and Erika Hayasaki being held? - **A:** Writing about Medicine, Grief, and Loss with Sunita Puri and Erika Hayasaki takes place on Thu, 12 Mar, 2026 at 04:00 pm to Thu, 12 Mar, 2026 at 05:30 pm at The Humanities Gateway Building, Room 1010, The UC Irvine School of Humanities, Irvine, United States. - **Q**: Who is organizing Writing about Medicine, Grief, and Loss with Sunita Puri and Erika Hayasaki? - **A:** Writing about Medicine, Grief, and Loss with Sunita Puri and Erika Hayasaki is organized by UCI Center for Storytelling/ Literary Journalism. ## Structured Data (JSON-LD) ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Event", "name": "Writing about Medicine, Grief, and Loss with Sunita Puri and Erika Hayasaki", "image": "https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events8/banners/feba7f36d0024616d6c8ec482d2332c0eb7ed6d4f30a7ce9c680dbafe7906c1e-rimg-w1024-h768-dcfbf4e4-gmir.jpg?v=1772920228", "startDate": "2026-03-12", "endDate": "2026-03-12", "url": "https://allevents.in/irvine/writing-about-medicine-grief-and-loss-with-sunita-puri-and-erika-hayasaki/100001984582459560", "location": { "@type": "Place", "name": "The Humanities Gateway Building, Room 1010", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "The UC Irvine School of Humanities", "postalCode": "92697", "addressLocality": "Irvine", "addressRegion": "CA", "addressCountry": "US" }, "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": "33.6471239", "longitude": "-117.84213249999999" } }, "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode", "description": "In this masterclass, Dr. Sunita Puri and Professor Erika Hayasaki will share their experiences with writing about challenging subjects.", "offers": [ { "@type": "AggregateOffer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availabilityStarts": "2026-04-08", "availabilityEnds": "2026-03-12", "validFrom": "2026-04-08", "lowPrice": "0.00", "highPrice": "0.00", "price": "0.00", "url": "https://allevents.in/irvine/writing-about-medicine-grief-and-loss-with-sunita-puri-and-erika-hayasaki/100001984582459560" }, { "@type": "Offer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availabilityStarts": "2026-04-08", "availabilityEnds": "", "validFrom": "2026-04-08", "url": "https://allevents.in/irvine/writing-about-medicine-grief-and-loss-with-sunita-puri-and-erika-hayasaki/100001984582459560", "price": 0, "name": "General Admission" } ], "organizer": [ { "@type": "Organization", "name": "UCI Center for Storytelling Literary Journalism", "url": "https://allevents.in/org/uci-center-for-storytelling-literary-journalism/18894778", "description": "Visit us online athttps://www.humanities.uci.edu/storytellingcenterwww.humanities.uci.edu/litjournTwitter:  @ucilitjContact:Patricia Pierson(949) 824-6876E-mail: piersonp@uci.edu" } ] } ] ```