Nurse writer

Nurse writers are nurses, primarily registered nurses (RNs), who write for general audiences in the creative genres of poetry, fiction, and drama, as well as in creative non-fiction. The published work of the nurse writer is analogous to that of the physician writer, which may or may not deal explicitly with health topics but is informed by a professional experience of human vulnerability and acute observation. The following is a partial list of nurse writers, grouped by century and arranged chronologically by year of birth.

19th century

• Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
• Mary Livermore (1820-1905)
• Emma Maria Pearson (1828-1893)
• Katherine Prescott Wormeley (1830-1908)
• Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
• Frances Margaret Taylor (1832-1900)
• Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835-1905)
• Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841-1898)
• Susie Taylor (1848-1912)

20th century

• Lillias Hamilton (1858-1925)
• Helen Churchill Candee (1858-1949)
• Lillian D. Wald (1867-1940)
• Ellen Newbold LaMotte (1873-1961)
• Mollie Skinner (1876-1955)
• Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958)
• D. K. Broster (1877-1950)
• Mary Borden (1886–1968)
• Florence Farmborough (1887-1978)
• Agatha Christie (1890-1976)
• Nella Larsen (1891-1964)
• Louise de Kiriline Lawrence (1894-1992)
• Helen Dore Boylston (1895-1984)
• Virginia Avenel Henderson (1897 - 1996)
• Jane Arbor (1903-1994)
• Mary Renault (1905-1983)
• Betty Jeffrey (1908-2000)
• Anne Baker (1914- )
• Patricia St. John (1919-1993)
• Charles Logan (1930- )
• Grace Ogot (1934- )
• Sharon Webb (1936-2010)
• Abasse Ndione (1946- )
• Elizabeth Berg (1948- )
• Sue Monk Kidd (1948- )
• Carol Gino (1941- )
• Echo Heron ( )
• Elizabeth Norman ( )
• John Glenday (1952- )
• Kathleen Pagana (1952- )
• Helene Tursten (1954- )
• Robin Oliveira (1954- )
• Gisele Pineau (1956- )
• Jo Brand (1957- )
• Theodore Deppe ( )
• Anna Jansson (1958- )
• Teresa Medeiros (1962- )

21st century

• Paul Genesse
• Cortney Davis (1945-)
• Theresa Brown
• Josephine Ensign, FNP, MPH, DrPH.
• Dr. Scharmaine L. Baker, NP
• Wendy Brooks (1977-)

Further reading

Chinn, Peggy L. and Jean Watson, eds. Art and Aesthetics in Nursing. New York: National League for Nursing Press, 1994.

Davis, Cortney, and Judy Schaefer, eds. Between the Heartbeats: Poetry and Prose by Nurses. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995.

---. Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose by Nurses. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003.

Schaefer, Judy, ed. The Poetry of Nursing: Poems and Commentaries of Leading Nurse-Poets. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006.