William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition Awards Ceremony

Diana Farid

Physician, Writer, Filmmaker, Educator

Diana Farid MD, MPH is a physician, award-winning author, poet, and filmmaker. She is a staff physician at the Stanford Vaden Health Center and Clinical Associate Professor in the Stanford Department of Medicine. She holds a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies from Berkeley, with a concentration in public health, socio-economic development, and human rights. She was awarded a fellowship by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to be a Child and Family Health Leadership Fellow at UCLA, where she also earned a Masters in Public Health focused on community health, health communications, and story as a means for health behavior change.



She creates and amplifies stories and art to foster the health and human connections needed to create a better world.



As a physician consultant for The Media Project, Advocates for Youth, Diana consulted for writers and producers for TV shows such as GREY’S ANATOMY and STRONG MEDICINE, to promote adolescent health through entertainment. Her debut feature length documentary film production, AMERICAN RHYTHMS (2008) (americanrhythmsmovie.com/), celebrates the positive impact of music on elementary school students.



She has lead or presented at numerous Medical Humanities and Arts programs at Stanford, including annual readings of her original poetry in collaboration with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, leading Pegasus' The Body as Temple curated reading, and leading Medicine and the Muse's annual collaboration with UNAFF, among others. As the first Assistant Director of Stanford School of Medicine’s Program in Bioethics and Film, she produced film screenings and panel discussions with producers, directors, field experts, Stanford faculty, students, and the community, exploring films with vital bioethical implications. She established the first Stanford Film and Medicine Interest group for medical students to study film as a health promotion tool and has mentored medical student film projects. She was a lead producer of the 2018 Stanford Frankenstein@200 year-long cross campus film screening series and panels on the cultural, social, and bioethical impact of medical research, technology, and healthcare through the lens of story in film. Currently, she mentors Medical Humanities and Art Faculty Fellows.



Diana’s poems have been presented in anthologies, journals, gallery exhibits, and live story telling events, including The Nocturnists. Her poem, Dear Medicine, is part of the seminal 2019 report by the National Academy of Medicine, “Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout”. She is an Editorial Board member of the medical humanities journal, The Pharos.



Her multi-award winning picture book, WHEN YOU BREATHE, melds respiratory science with poetry. Her multi-award winning novel WAVE, noted as “Raw and powerful…Rich, layered and heart-rending” — Kirkus, won the Cybils Award for Poetry Novel and was named a Best Middle Grade Book of 2022 by the School Library Journal. WAVE highlights the power of poetry and music on wellbeing. Her 2024 books, THE LIGHT OF HOME and ALREADY ALL THE LOVE, celebrate home and presence.