Cross-Pollinations with Dr. Diana Toubassi and Elizabeth Ruth

Описание: Cross-Pollinations with Dr. Diana Toubassi and Elizabeth Ruth

On November 26, 2025, writer-physician Diana Toubassi and poet/novelist Elizabeth Ruth joined Cross-Pollinations to present “On Narrative” a reading and discussion on the work of narrative in poetry, prose, and medicine. This session explores storytelling as a source of various forms of healing, institutional resistance, and relational understanding and connection at the intersection of literature and medicine.

This event was curated jointly by the League of Canadian Poets, The Canadian Association for Health Humanities, and the Health Arts Research Centre.

Hosted by: Mic Jones

Dr. Diana Toubassi is a comprehensive family physician and clinician-teacher at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. Shortly after joining the Department of Family & Community Medicine, she completed a highly successful tenure as Site Director of Postgraduate Education. In more recent years, her academic work has related to trainee wellbeing and how one might best leverage the medical humanities in its support. In this arena, she developed and disseminated a highly successful narrative-based curriculum (“Resident Reflection Rounds”), which sought to foster resident wellbeing through reflection on professional identity formation. This curriculum has since been adapted to, and implemented in, other residency programs. She has published several pieces of creative non-fiction and presented numerous invited lectures and workshops on narrative medicine, and the relationship between the experience of meaning and wellbeing. Dr. Toubassi has just completed her first novel. 

Elizabeth Ruth is the author of the poetry collection, This Report Is Strictly Confidential (2024), and the novels, Semi-Detached (2023), Matadora (2013), Smoke (2005), and Ten Good Seconds of Silence (2001). Her work has been recognized by the Writers’ Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, the City of Toronto Book Award, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and One Book One Community. Ruth is also the editor of the anthology, Bent on Writing: Contemporary Queer Tales. She holds a BA in English Literature, an MA in Counselling Psychology, and an MFA in Creative Writing. Elizabeth Ruth teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto.