“Through poignant accounts of his
patients, contextualized by medical history and layered with bits of family memoir, Ricardo Nuila has achieved the impossible: writing a comprehensive, personal, and
gut-wrenching account of the American healthcare system.”
Javier Zamora, author of Solito
More Than You Want To Know
I work as an internal medicine doctor and hospitalist in my hometown of Houston. It’s hard to imagine practicing medicine anywhere else but at a safety-net hospital, where the focus is a person’s healthcare problem.
My experiences as a doctor give my writing its fuel. I focus mostly on health disparities, how policies affect real people, and the interface between art and medicine. I’ve written for Texas Monthly, VQR, The New York Times Sunday Review, The Atlantic.com, and The New England Journal of Medicine. I also covered Hurricane Harvey and the COVID pandemic for The New Yorker.
My short stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories anthology as well as in McSweeney’s and other literary magazines. The New England Review published one of my short stories and awarded me its inaugural Emerging Writer’s Award.
I also direct the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab (HEAL) at Baylor College of Medicine. This lab develops educational materials and experiences that weave the arts and humanities into medical education.
Nonfiction
Fiction
Clippings
Dr. Nuila spent four months at the Paisano Ranch, J. Frank Dobie’s 254-acre retreat west of Austin, now owned and maintained by The University of Texas at Austin.