The Value of a Life

"The way we, as individuals, design our days shapes the planet. The way we, as individuals, experience our proximity to death in the midst of a medical crisis shapes the planet, too."  

Join author Katherine E. Standefer for a reading and discussion of her debut book Lightning Flowers: My Journey To Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life. Recently named one of Oprah Magazine's "Ten Titles to Pick Up Now," Lightning Flowers tells the story of the author's troubled relationship with her own implanted cardiac defibrillator within the context of the American healthcare system, and her quest to understand the resources it takes to save one Western life. In this conversation, Standefer will share excerpts from her visit to a mine in Madagascar that extracts materials necessary to her ICD, and reflect on how her relationship to death changes the way she views this resource use. 

Standefer's work appeared in The Best American Essays 2016. She was a 2018 Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good and a 2017 Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow at The Mesa Refuge. Standefer earned her MFA at the University of Arizona, and teaches Creative Nonfiction at Ashland University's Low-Residency MFA. She writes from a piñon- and juniper-studded mesa in New Mexico, where she lives with her chickens. 

This conversation will be facilitated by Dr. Joseph McCaffrey, who is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and member of UNO's Medical Humanities Faculty. His research and teaching focuses on the intersection between philosophy and the mind-brain sciences in addition to medical ethics and the philosophy of psychiatry.

This event is free, but registration is required.