Emily Silverman

Biography

Emily Silverman is an internal-medicine physician at UCSF, writer, and creator of The Nocturnists, an award-winning medical storytelling program that has uplifted the voices of more than 450 clinicians since 2016 through its podcast and sold-out live performances. Her work has been supported by MacDowell and published in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, JAMA, CHEST, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and McSweeney’s. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter. 

See Work

REPORTING / Fall 2023

Best Practices

By Emily Silverman ,  Illustration by María Jesús Contreras

How doctors across the country—fed up, burned-out, and disillusioned—are trying to reclaim the soul of medicine.

 

Illustration by María Jesús Contreras
#VQRTRUESTORY / Spring 2022

COVID Dreams

By Emily Silverman ,  Illustrations by Nazila Jamalifard

I used to have these dreams all the time when I was a kid about my teeth falling out. Or I would reach into my mouth and pull them out. But I hadn’t had them for a decade or two, until last week, when I woke up to get ready for my shift as...

Illustration by Nazila Jamalifard
ON BECOMING / Winter 2020

Attending

By Emily Silverman ,  Illustrations by Daniel Zvereff

I can’t tell you why I rented the theater downtown, other than that it was inevitable, like the notes of a song. Facing the rows of empty velvet seats, I felt the thrust of potential. At night, doctors stood on stage telling stories—not of...

Illustration bt Daniel Zvereff