Proof of registration, via a QR code on your phone or on paper, will be required to enter Reid Hall. Entry will be refused to those who are not registered. Please note that access will not be permitted 15 minutes after the start of the event.
This event will be held in English.
Organized by the Columbia Global Paris Center.
To be notified of upcoming Paris Global Center events, we invite you to sign up for our monthly newsletter.
—
Maylis de Kerangal’s 2014 novel Réparer les vivants (published in English as The Heart) follows a heart transplant over 24 hours, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. It examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved — the donor’s parents, the physicians, the nurses, the organ transplant coordinators, the recipient and the recipient’s family — as they navigate decisions of life and death.
Teresa Lee, a pediatric cardiologist specializing in heart transplants, was deeply moved by the book. It inspired her to step away briefly from the rigorous daily demands of the hospital in February 2026 and come to Reid Hall as a faculty visitor, where she wrote an essay and recorded a podcast honoring the anonymous children whose donated hearts give her patients a chance to live.
In this second edition of In Other Words, de Kerangal and Lee will explore the themes of Réparer les vivants and consider the broader ethical, emotional and social implications of care.
In Other Words pairs authors with real-life practitioners of the themes in their books for a conversation on how literature and experience shape each other.
Speakers
Teresa Lee is an Assistant Professor of Pediatric Cardiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She is board certified in pediatrics, pediatric cardiology with advanced training in heart failure/transplantation, and clinical genetics. As a physician-scientist, her research is focused on identifying novel genetic causes of cardiomyopathy in children. Her current research focus under the National Heart Lung Blood Institute K23 Award and Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation Research Grant has been on infantile cardiomyopathy. She is also involved in the Pediatric Cardiomyopathy Research and actively involved in its research efforts to understand the genetic causes of cardiomyopathy in the pediatric population.
Maylis de Kerangal writes novels and non-fiction works, most of which are published by Éditions Verticales/Gallimard. Among her titles, *Corniche Kennedy (2008), *Naissance d’un pont* (2010), a fictional account of a major construction project in an imaginary city (winner of the Prix Médicis and the Prix Franz Hessel), *Réparer les vivants* in 2014, a novel about a heart transplant (France-Culture Télérama Students’ Prize, RTL-Lire Grand Prix), adapted to cinema and theatre, translated in 40 languages or *Un monde à portée de main* in 2018, a novel that explores the nature of creation. Published in May 2021, *Canoës* brings together eight short stories that explore the human voice. Her work is characterised by an archaeological imagination, the evolving nature of youth and the concept of landscape. In 2024, she published *Jour de Ressac*, a novel centred on the city of Le Havre.
—
This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.
Reid Hall, the Columbia Global Paris Center, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed by their speakers and guests.
