SAIC Alum Margaret Overton Publishes Second Acclaimed Memoir

Margaret Overton (MFA 2002) credits SAIC with jumpstarting her career in nonfiction and continues to receive high praise for her second memoir, Hope For a Cool Pillow, which explores her parents’ end-of-life care plans and embeds them in larger, national debates about quality of life. Along with her unique education from SAIC, Overton is also a practicing physician whose professional experiences in medicine informed her creative work and drove her to write this impassioned call for improved eldercare and increased communication between aging parents and their children.

The Chicago Tribune recently profiled Overton and notes, “[She] contends that end-of-life care is not about the health of the body, but about the health of the soul and what is important to the patient at the end of his or her life.” Like other SAIC alumni, Overton hopes that her work sparks social change. Later in the article, she says, "That's why I wrote [the book]. I want readers to think about their own families and have their own conversations."

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