Through his writing, teaching, and work with the San Francisco Zen Center and University of California, San Francisco, BJ Miller has spearheaded a nationwide effort to change the way we think about and approach death and dying. Rather than hospitalization and endless attempts at sustaining life, Miller advocates a mindful, human-centered model of care that embraces dying not as a medical event, but rather as a universally shared life experience. Miller is a longtime hospice and palliative care physician and educator. He has been on faculty at The University of California, San Francisco since 2007, where he has worked in all settings of care: hospital, clinic, residential facility, and home. He now sees patients and families at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Pico Iyer is the author of many books including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Man Within My Head, The Art of Stillness, and Autumn Light (April 2019). An essayist for Time since 1986, he also publishes regularly in Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times.