From our first day of HDIO, we were struck by the diversity of experiences that led our peers to pursue medicine, and felt eager to provide a platform to explore all of our individual relationships with medicine through art. We were inspired to create a publication to showcase literature and poetry, similar to those that exist at many other medical schools, but it soon became clear that the talents in our student body extend beyond written text to include music, dance, visual art, and more. Hoping to include all of these modalities of art in our magazine, we began a partnership with the Interprofessional Health Sciences Library to publish the first issue of Ripple Magazine on their website, allowing us to host multimedia projects.
This year we asked that submissions be adjacent to medicine and consistent with our theme, “First steps: an exploration of beginnings.'' We are a new magazine, a relatively new school, and an editorial board beginning our careers. This theme inspires a spirit of hopefulness and passion, and implores our artists to reflect on formative experiences that set them on their individual path to HMSOM and beyond. When we shared this theme, we received an enormous response from not only students of our school, but also from faculty and community members. In this issue you will find poetry, prose, visual art, dance, photography, and more, all reflective of our artists’ individuality, our shared passion for healing, and what we’ve created as we explore our personal journeys in medicine.
The editors of Ripple Magazine are extremely grateful to Allison Piazza for providing creative support, technical support, and relentless enthusiasm from the very beginning, and for initiating our relationship with the Interprofessional Health Sciences Library. We are grateful to the following individuals who were integral to the success of the first issue of Ripple Magazine: thank you to Sania Ali for writing “Why Ripple”, Mackenzie Fox for editing this letter and “Why Ripple”, Leigh Plasil and Grace Basralian for designing our logo, Daniel Silverstein for providing this year’s cover art, Mai Hatazaki for her insight on website design, Aaradhana Natarajan for her editing contributions, and Mirai Mikhail and Maya Sorini for their guidance, support, and enthusiasm. Thank you to all of our artists for your creativity, vulnerability, and passion. We hope you enjoy the first issue of Ripple Magazine.
Mira Blecherman and Priya Bhave, Editors-in-Chief
2023 Editorial Board: Mira Blecherman, Priya Bhave, Aaradhana Natarajan, Leigh Plasil, Sania Ali, Mackenzie Fox, Mai Hatazaki, Allison Piazza
