Michael Scalise
Nonfiction Reading: Tuesday, September 8
7 p.m. Bucknell Hall

Mike Scalise’s essays and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Post Road magazine, Hot Metal Bridge, The Rumpus, PopMatters and many other publications. His writing has received grants, awards and scholarships from George Mason University as well as the Bread Loaf and Southampton Writers’ Conferences.  He earned his M.F.A. at George Mason University, where he studied creative nonfiction.  He’s currently at work on a memoir about brain tumors, bad decisions, and Andre the Giant.

Scalise will share the reading with Stadler Fellow Will Schutt.

Excerpt from essay “The No T Experiment”, from the Fall/Winter 2008 issue of Ninth Letter:

Once a month I took the A train up to my endocrine specialist’s office in upper Manhattan. I’d take blood tests and she and I would discuss treatment options, small advancements in hormone therapy, experimental studies I could take part in. Each month it was as though I took my body into the shop for an estimate.
     My specialist assigned menial tasks to the medical students she mentored: taking vitals, drawing blood. I was well against type for the patients they’d usually treated. Pituitary tumors often go unchecked for decades. The symptoms are so slow to develop—profuse sweating, sleep apnea—that acromegalics are often diagnosed in their mid-forties to early fifties. A patient my age was extremely rare and unexpected, and because of my youth, many of the med students struggled to find a balance in our interactions. A jolly, well-meaning intern named Carlos once gave me a stress test, and seemed shocked that I could run on a treadmill for ten straight minutes. He shook his fist vigorously during the last minute or so, cheering me on, then put his arm around me afterwards and clutched my shoulder, the way proud fathers do.