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Jonathan Gleason

@jon_a_g

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Writer | FIELD GUIDE TO FALLING ILL out now from @yalebooks & @yalereviewㅣChicago 📍

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We’re thrilled to share the cover of Field Guide to Falling Ill by Jonathan Gleason (@jon_a_g), the inaugural winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize, cosponsored by @yalebooks and @yalereview, and selected by Meghan O’Rourke (@meghanor)—a riveting exploration of illness and medicine that imagines a more humane form of care.

Drawing on his experiences as a medical interpreter and patient, and on a decade of historical research, Gleason illuminates a stunning range of topics, including the racial dimensions of organ donation, the past and present of the AIDS crisis, the troubled relationship between state violence and mental illness, and the trial of a doctor accused of murdering his patients. He shows how medicine is influenced, compromised, and enlivened by the cultural narratives, historical contexts, and complicated people who practice it.

“Illness is often framed as a crisis to endure or overcome on the way back to a restored ‘intact’ self,” writes O’Rourke in her foreword. “But as Gleason’s work reminds us, illness is also a way of knowing. His essays speak to the precarious beauty of that knowing, and to the ways it connects us—to history, to culture, to one another.”

Out January 27, 2026, from @yalebooks. Available now for preorder! by @jon_a_g

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a year ago

Happy publication day!! FIELD GUIDE TO FALLING ILL is out NOW!

I have been floored and grateful by the positive response the book has already received. Publishers Weekly describes it as “Enlightening and beautifully written. . . . Sparkles with clarity and precision, rendering complicated concepts accessible and stimulating. . . . A triumph.”

None of this would have been possible without the incredible teams at @yalereview and @yalebooks, who both sponsored the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize and spent countless hours shaping this book and individual essays into their final forms.

Please join me at @bookends_and_beginnings for the official launch event, featuring the incredible poet @kevin_kantor! I will also be readying Thursday the 29th at @literatibookstore in Ann Arbor, and in conversation with @meghanor next Wednesday the 4th at @mcnallyjackson seaport in New York City. Jonathan Gleason with his newly released commotion of essays Field Guide to Falling Ill taken in Bookends & Beginnings by @jon_a_g

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9 months ago

Congratulations @kodakcath and @chrismorelli on both your marriage and putting on one of the most stunning weddings I’ve ever seen!

Lucky to have such a wonderful family! by @jon_a_g

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3 months ago

First time with a Lav Mic 😎🎤

So lucky to share a stage with the brilliant @itswalela author of “Bless the Blood” and @meghanor author of “The Invisible Kingdom” last week at Aspens Ideas Health. You can see the whole session here: https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/how-patient-stories-enrich-medicine

@aspenideas
#aspenideashealth taken in Aspen Ideas Festival by @jon_a_g

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4 months ago

Can’t wait to see the 🏔️ Rockies 🏔️ for the first time next week as part of Aspen Ideas Health. On June 24th, I’ll be talking about the role of patient narratives in medicine with walela Nehamda, moderated by @meghanor.

If you have any recommendations for avoiding altitude sickness, let me know 👀

@aspenideas

#AspenIdeasHealth taken in Aspen Ideas Festival by @jon_a_g

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4 months ago

Thanks for the incredible book tour, birthday, and beautiful new home! Couldn’t ask for a better debut or family to share it with. The past two months have been wonderful and exhausting, so I’m taking a break to work on new work📚

See you in May…maybe by @jon_a_g

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6 months ago

Your weekend read: We sit down with Jonathan Gleason to discuss his prizewinning collection of essays, Field Guide to Falling Ill. Covering themes of disease, medicine, and humanity, Gleason discuss the capacity of language to express, experimental essays, HIV/AIDS, moving beyond medical establishments, the heart, and more. To read the full essay, see the link in bio.

Gleason is the inaugural winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize, sponsored jointly with The Yale Review.

#lgbtq #illness #nonfiction #essays by @jon_a_g

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8 months ago

⭐️ Happy pub day to Jonathan Gleason! Field Guide to Falling Ill, the inaugural winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize, is out today from Yale University Press (@yalebooks) ⭐️

Drawing on his experiences as a medical interpreter and patient, Gleason explores the human lives behind the corporate, legal, and cultural practices that shape disease—from the racial dimensions of organ donation to the history of the AIDS crisis and the relationship between state violence and mental illness. With sharp analysis and boundless empathy, his essays imagine a more humane form of care.

In her foreword, prize judge and The Yale Review’s executive editor Meghan O’Rourke (@meghanor) writes: “Illness is often framed as a crisis to endure or overcome. But as Gleason’s work reminds us, illness is also a way of knowing. His essays speak to the precarious beauty of that knowing, and to the ways it connects us—to history, to culture, to one another.”

“Arresting prose meets emotional and clinical intelligence in this lucid collection.” ⭐️
Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A triumph.” ⭐️
Publishers Weekly, starred review

Join us next Wednesday, February 4, at McNally Jackson Seaport (@mcnallyjackson) at 7pm for a reading and conversation with Jonathan and Meghan. by @jon_a_g

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9 months ago

Moving among reportage, history, and personal reflection, Jonathan Gleason (@jon_a_g)’s FIELD GUIDE TO FALLING ILL, the inaugural winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize, probes the unstable boundary between harm and help in contemporary medicine. The result is “a remarkable book of essays that thinks with unusual clarity about vulnerability as a lived condition,” writes Meghan O’Rourke (@meghanor), prize judge and TYR executive editor. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls the book “a triumph.”

Today in The Yale Review, we’re publishing an excerpt from the book’s final chapter, “No Harm,” which examines the murder trial of an Ohio intensive-care physician alongside larger questions of medical authority, palliative care, and how meaning—and blame—are assigned in the face of death. Follow the link in our bio to read the excerpt and to preorder the book, out January 27 from @yalebooks. 📷 Getty Images by @jon_a_g

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9 months ago

FIELD GUIDE TO FALLING ILL is out in 2ish weeks!! 12/27/26
Watch me unbox it!

Thank you to everyone at @yalebooks and @yalereview for helping to bring this collection into the world!

#authorsofinstagram #bookstagram #writingcommunity by @jon_a_g

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9 months ago

For several years now, we’ve been dreaming about what it would mean to own a home with your best friends. Then this fall, we got together and said what if we were ready to make our dreams a reality?

Somehow, even faster than I think we realized that we could… WE DID IT!!!

This little family unit is OFFICAL and we can’t wait to invite you over to Kenmore Fantasy.

Get ready to be so sick of us and our antics 😜

#bestfriends #chosenfamily #homeowners #firstimehomebuyer #thisiswhatdreamsaremadeof #kenmorefantasy by @jon_a_g

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a year ago

🍃🍂🍁📚🍎🪧💍🌅👑⚔️ taken in Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament - Chicago by @jon_a_g

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a year ago