Stanford Medicine professor and author Diana Farid blends art and medicine through children’s literature

Published Jan. 15, 2025, 10:46 p.m., last updated Jan. 18, 2025, 11:20 a.m.

At the Farm, Diana Farid cares for patients, primarily adolescents and young adults, as a clinical associate professor in the Stanford School of Medicine. At home, she’s a mother of four children and a poet, unraveling complicated medical conditions and terms into accessible picture books for young children. Her books, “The Light of Home” and “Wave,” among others, have received recognition from Scholastic Education, the Northern California Book Awards, Cybils Awards and more. Farid sat down with The Daily to speak about her career in medicine and as a writer. 

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

The Stanford Daily (TSD): Medicine and poetry are, what seem like, completely disparate fields. Where did your interests in these careers stem from?

Diana Farid (DF): I wrote even when I was a little girl. In one of the essays that I’ve written, I say that reading liner notes of music songs, albums and cassette tapes were my first poetry. Around that time, I wrote poems — I wrote bad poems. I was always drawn to words that could potentially have a melody and a rhythm associated with them, and could move your heart. But of course, I adored learning about how the body works and taking care of people at the same time. When I was an undergrad, I didn’t major in a science; I majored in peace and conflict studies at Berkeley. As a young adult, my first kind of associations of art and its power were in that course of study: the power of films to depict the suffering of war, the power of story to create empathy. I carried that with me into medical school. 

TSD: Even though your works are primarily picture books, they grapple with heavy topics of loss, belonging and family. How do you thread these themes in your storytelling and creative processes to make them digestible for a younger audience?

DF: One of the things that I learned in taking care of young kids is I had to practice how to make a really complicated body process potentially understandable to a younger person. And I do my best to ground it in something that they already know in a metaphor or in maybe an experience that they’ve already had. So in the case of “The Light of Home,” the metaphor was sort of this changing horizon and sunlight, and how it can manifest in different places. 

The other thing is that they are not unaware of the heavy things that are going on. I went to present to a few 100 kids about “The Light of Home. A number of them raised their hands and asked the most important question, which was: why did Nur, who’s the character in “The Light of Home,” have to leave? Why did people come into her home and destroy it? If you think about what the answer is to that question, it really forces us to think about society, and really the fundamental ways in which we really can shift to make the world healthier. 

TSD: Is there a certain one that you really hold dear to your heart?

DF: I know this is not going to be the answer that you want, because I can’t pinpoint it. I wouldn’t write any of it unless I felt really strongly about it. There’s a music producer named T Bone Burnett who said something like the job of the artist is to observe the things that they’re seeing as they walk down the road, and then they notice something that’s beautiful or awe-inspiring; then they and they want to point it out. And so for me, each of the books is a “wait, look over there. I just noticed this thing and I really want to share this with somebody else.”

TSD: With your large array of awards, it’s clear that these books aren’t just touching the hearts of children, but adults as well. What does it mean to you that your books have such a wide audience?

DF: It means the world to me. People say, like, “what do you write?” And you know, I’ll say poetry. And I’ll say: I write for the young and people of all ages. I realize that these stories are not only important to entertain children or enlighten children, but they also might have the purpose of reframing experiences in other people’s childhoods or lives, in general, in a different way. 

TSD: It’s hard to imagine that you have another career aside from your writerly one. How do you balance and juggle all these different careers?

DF: I don’t see these careers as hats because hats, you can only wear one at a time. I really see it as each being like lamps or stars, and it sheds rays. And sometimes, you know, some of those rays are maybe directed towards a certain field. Others of those rays are directed in something that seems seemingly different, but they’re actually all happening in a way at the same time; they inform each other, and they all have the same source, often in terms of intention and purpose. So how I do it is that, really, a lot of my work is just rooted with the same intention of purpose.

The other very practical answer is, I don’t work every day of the week doing medicine. I actually only work about a fifth of my week taking care of patients. I have purposefully not followed a traditional path, and make significantly less monetary income so that I can do this with other work. 

TSD: In terms of the sun ray metaphor you mentioned, do you see your writing reflecting some of the stories you hear and see in taking care of patients? Where does the inspiration for these stories lie?

DF: I think they feed each other. I try really hard, even if a specific patient experience really emboldens me, to not have my books be about a specific case. But, for example, the book I’m writing now certainly will have things weaved into it that do have to do with patient experiences. I’m most passionate about where we see society’s mistreatment of girls and women, and that shows up in my exam room. And so I’ll use that anger, I’ll weave that into a story that may not be directly related to medicine, but certainly has a lot to say about things that affect what we see in the exam room.

TSD: Can you tell us a bit about your new book, “Already All the Love,” that was released on Dec. 3?

DF: When I first had my kids, and even still now, we see a lot of books that are very popular about people’s futures for babies and all the wonderful things you’ll be. I was thinking to myself, “What about now? What about that feeling that my baby and I have when we’re looking into each other’s eyes and everything is fine?” We’re experiencing a love that neither of us have gotten to experience before that is so incredibly powerful. I wrote “Already All the Love,” not only for babies and for moms to revel in the present, but for all of us to remember that we’re already a fulfillment simply by breathing, simply by being.

Grace Lee is a managing editor of Arts and Life, and was formerly a Magazine editor and a desk editor for news. She can probably be found poring over The Canterbury Tales or in the ceramics studio.

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