“Join us for an evening with Calgary-based writer and physician Ellen Anderson Penno as she shares her latest memoir, Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found.
When: Thursday, May 28 | 6:30pm
Where: Friends Program Room
Ellen Anderson Penno is a writer and medical doctor with an MD and MS from the University of Minnesota, a rotating surgical internship at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an ophthalmology residency at the Mayo Clinic, a refractive surgery fellowship with Dr. Howard Gimbel, and two graduate certificates - one in Creative Writing from Humber College and the other in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. Ellen continues to work in clinics in Calgary and Canmore and enjoys spending time in nature in her free time. Her memoir Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Foundwas published by NeWest Press in 2024. She has also published short essays and poetry.
About Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found:
When she was twenty-four years old, Ellen Anderson Penno lost her partner in a climbing accident while they were ascending Mount Baker in Washington’s Cascade Range. The avalanche hid his body in a crevasse just weeks before Ellen was slated to begin medical school, and she soon found herself torn between deferring her studies for a year or starting right away with a full course load.
Rather than succumbing to grief and risk never beginning her medical education at all, Ellen plunged deep into her studies, surrounded by death on all sides, struggling to maintain her way through her turbulent emotions and a rigorous med school schedule.
In this stirring and often mordantly funny memoir, Ellen structures a story of mourning, loss, despair, and love through the lens of the classic medical text Gray’s Anatomy, showing readers what becomes of those who must rebuild their lives after tragedy strikes.
Café Books will be on site during the event and will have copies of Counting Bones available for purchase.
For more information about Ellen and her work, visit her website.”
Hosted by the Canmore Public Library.