“It leaves me sad and yet thankful for getting a bit of the wondrous out of something so strange. And it crystalizes what I want to do with my story—give readers something a little weird, a little tragic, and yet show the beauty that comes through that character. That’s my writing goal, and Laura Gilpin did it in 68 words. […]

"After getting her MFA from Columbia in New York and spending a few years writing and teaching, Laura Gilpin changed careers and became a registered nurse. She also became a leader in pushing for humanizing patient care in hospitals. She co-wrote a book about putting patients first.

"That the poet who wrote “The Two-Headed Calf” became a nurse makes perfect sense to me. How many people would just look at such a freaky thing and shudder, or look away […] how many people wouldn’t see a patient’s disease before the human underneath? It’s the same thing, and I admire the poet nurse who looked harder.”

—Selene Bell, “A Poet to Admire”