Please help us in welcoming local author, physician, and advocate Shanda McManus as she releases her newest memoir, Brother Epistles. Engaging with her brother’s death in Philadelphia over 30 years ago by returning to the memories of their North Philly upbringing. Through a series of letters of voices, McManus adresses the issues and violence communities continue to contend with in the city of brotherly love.
Shanda will be joined by her editor and fellow author Athena Dixon, making her return to BBM. Copies of Brother Epistles will be available for the author to sign following the reading.
Dr. Shanda McManus is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and author of Brother Epistles: A Sister's Memoir (Split/Lip Press, June 23, 2026), which received a starred notice from Kirkus Reviews for being “an affecting tribute to a lost brother and a nuanced portrait of what it means to be Black and upper-middle class in America”.
Dr. McManus bridges the worlds of medicine and storytelling. Her writing has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and other literary and medical journals. A 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, 2023 Baldwin For The Arts Fellow, and founding member of bookinc.org, a New Jersey writing collective, she is a proud literary citizen.
Through her Weatherproof newsletter and platform, Dr. McManus teaches individuals and communities how to protect themselves against the chronic stress of systemic inequities. Her work centers on seven pillars of weatherproofing—nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, social connections, avoidance of risky substances, and spiritual/ancestral connections—as tools for resilience and longevity.
A powerful advocate for health equity, she educates medical and community audiences on weathering, narrative medicine, and how to dismantle health disparities.
As a faculty member at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, she champions the Human Dimension course, which teaches medical students to maintain their humanity and empathy throughout their training. Dr. McManus has taught students, residents, and faculty to incorporate narrative practices into medicine, practice cultural humility, and address bias in healthcare.
Her book, Brother Epistles, examines gun violence as a public health crisis through intimate letters to her brother Monir, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in North Philadelphia in 1992. Drawing on both personal grief and her two decades of clinical experience, the book explores the systemic factors that disproportionately affect young men in urban communities.
Dr. McManus received her B.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.D. from Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University.
Athena Dixon is an essayist and editor. She is the author of The Loneliness Files (Tin House), The Incredible Shrinking Woman (Split/Lip Press) and No God In This Room (Argus House Press). Her work also appears in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books) and Getting to the Truth: The Practice and Craft of Creative Nonfiction (Hippocampus Book). She writes the monthly column Radical Pleasure for Open Secrets Magazine.
Athena is an alumni of V.O.N.A., Callaloo, and Tin House and has received a prose fellowship from The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and a Second Book Residency from Tin House.
She serves as the Nonfiction Editor for Split/Lip Press and a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre Magazine.
She writes, edits, and resides in Philadelphia.