Journalist, critic, and memoirist Thomas Larson is the author of three books: The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease, The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” and The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative. He is a staff writer for the San Diego Reader. He teaches in the MFA Program at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio. Larson lectures on his heart disease and holds writing workshops for medical professionals and patients throughout the United States; his essay-series, “The Social Author,” is running at Guernica. His website is thomaslarson.com.