Austin Ratner is a prizewinning novelist, essayist, and an M.D.

His fiction, which includes two novels, often revolves around doctors and medical themes. It has been published in the U.S., the U.K., and France by Penguin and Little Brown, and has been honored with the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, the Missouri Review fiction prize, and a fellowship at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. His work has appeared in many national publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Magazine, which selected his essay “Sidewalk Phantom” as one of their 16 all-time best Lives columns. He has been profiled by The New York Times and interviewed about his work on the BBC and in Harpers MagazineScientific AmericanDiscover MagazineThe Guardian, and many other places.

Much of his recent non-fiction work has been devoted to mental health advocacy and includes a book-length study of the history of psychoanalysis and a public health proposal published in The Lancet.  He is former Editor-in-Chief of The American Psychoanalyst, the magazine of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He earned his M.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.