Perri Klass

Perri Klass is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University, and former Director of the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.  She also currently serves as Co-Director of NYU's academic center in Florence, Italy.  The leading journalist writing as a woman in medicine for the last generation, she has published widely in journals from the Washington Post to the New England Journal of Medicine; she writes the New York Times’ weekly pediatrics column “The Checkup;”  and is the author of three books of medical journalism as well as memoirs, novels, and short story collections. In all of her work, she brings together science and the humanities in a unique and exemplary way.  She is also National Medical Director of Reach Out and Read, a national organization which serves 4.8 million children annually and promotes early literacy through advice and books at pediatric checkups.