A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses, poorly understood and often invisible, affects millions of Americans, from autoimmune diseases to long COVID. In The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Meghan O’Rourke blends personal experience with a decade of research, uncovering the history and misconceptions behind these elusive conditions. This conversation will be moderated by Clémentine Goldszal, a frequent contributor to Elle and Le Monde Magazine.
About the speakers:
Meghan O’Rourke is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness and The Long Goodbye, as well as the poetry collections Sun In Days, Once, and Halflife. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and more. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, and a Whiting Nonfiction Award, she resides in New Haven, where she teaches at Yale University and is the editor of The Yale Review.
Clémentine Goldszal writes about culture and literature for Elle and Le Monde Magazine. She likes to tell stories about how books, movies and the people who make them shape the world we live in. She lived in Los Angeles for three years in the early 2010s and is now based in her hometown of Paris. Her first book of non-fiction, Premiers cris, will be out in France on January 24th (Le Seuil), and will be available in 2026 in the UK (Pushkin Press).
