Dr. Jacob M. Appel is a graduate of Columbia Medical School, a professional bioethicist and medical historian.   He has taught most recently at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was honored with the Undergraduate Council of Students Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003, and at New York University.  His essays on matters at the nexus of law, medicine and philosophy have appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Providence Journal, The Orlando Sentinel, The Tucson Citizen,and many regional newspapers, and his columns can be found at The Huffington Post and Opposing Views.  He also contributes to the Journal of Medical Ethics, the Journal of Clinical Ethics, the Hastings Center Report, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, GeneWatch, The Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics and numerous other academic publications.

Jacob’s fiction and plays often explore issues related to bioethics.  His short stories have appeared in more than eighty major literary journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review and Threepenny Review.  He won the Boston Review’s short fiction contest in 1998, the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for best short story in 2004, a Sherwood Anderson Foundation grant in 2005 and three New Millennium Writings first prizes in fiction in 2004, 2007 and 2008.  His work has been short listed for the O. Henry Award, The Pushcart Prize, The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-required Reading.  His plays have been performed at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre, Adrienne Theatre (Philadelphia), Detroit Repertory Theatre, Heller Theater (Tulsa), Curtain Players (Columbus), Epilogue Players (Indianapolis), Intentional Theatre (New London) and numerous other theaters across the country.  His one-act play, The Mistress of Wholesome, won the 2008 Writer’s Digest writing competition, the first stage play to win this honor in seventy-seven years.

Jacob holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Brown University, an M.A. and an M.Phil. from Columbia University, an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.  He is a member of the bar in New York State and Rhode Island. He holds an MD from Columbia University.

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