Michael M. Meguid

Michael Meguid is a surgeon and medical researcher transforming into a creative nonfiction writer. Born in Egypt of German/Egyptian parents some seventy-five years ago he lives a full life. He spent his early childhood in Egypt, Germany, and the England. After attending University College Hospital Medical School, London and successfully completed his medical training he won a travel scholarship to Boston, did a Surgical Residency at Harvard Medical School, and studied human nutrition at MIT to benefit his cancer patients. During the twenty-five years at Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, he and his research team authored numerous NIH-funded scientific papers. He is founder and now editor emeritus of Nutrition the International Journal.

In recognition of his contributions to surgery and the field of clinical nutrition, he is the recipient of the American Medical Association’s Joseph B. Goldberger Award in Clinical Nutrition, and the Garry Labbe Award. He is an elected Fellow to the American College of Surgeons, and among numerous other national and international honorary Fellowships. A participant of the Vatican and Nobel Conferences on human nutrition, he consulted in nutrition for NASA.

When Michael retired from surgery to care for his wife’s debilitating illness, he earned an MFA in creative non-fictions writing from Bennington Writers Seminars, VT. He attended workshops at Queens University of Charlotte, N.C. and Non-fiction Seminars at Goucher College, M.D. The Bennington Review, Stone Canoe, Columbia Medical Review, and Hektoen International have published his numerous stories. Michael has given readings of his work in Florida and London, been interviewed by National Public Radio station WRVO in NY and recognized by WGCU in Southern Florida. Presently, Making the Cut, a thirty-episode podcast of Michael’s story as a medical student in London is currently subscribed widely to in the USA and in thirty-two countries.

He is a member of the major writers Associations, and VP of Marco Island Writers where he teaches.

Michael has completed Mastering the Knife, a nonfiction coming of age story of a young Egyptian medical student in London, which goes beyond just a personal reflection, detailing my experiences of the time, London in the 1960s, the people, and the rites, rituals, rules and language of medicine, especially surgery. Readers of When Breath Becomes Air and The Still Point of the Turning World would find similar themes and enjoy Mastering the Knife. He is completing Roots & Branches, about the consequences of the intertwining of his Egyptian and German families, while The Other Nine, is stories about patients with noncancerous breast conditions equally troublesome and frightening as cancer, that warrant serious surgical treatment.

Michael reads, writes and lives on Marco Island, Florida with his four-legged muse, Lucy. Mastering the Knife is his first opus—an engaging and thoughtful book four years in the making.

ROOTS & BRANCHES

Roots & Branches is rooted in a story of love and longing based on a fatal accident in an upper Egyptian village over a century ago. In this rich and powerful story Meguid explores his remarkable early life based on a journal, letters and photos, which amply illustrate the book. How does a four-year-old boy uprooted from a cozy Egyptian family endure abandonment in impoverished post-war Germany? In this vivid biography of his formative years Meguid traces his childhood—alone, forsaken and often threatened with corporal punishment. Born to an Egyptian father and a German mother, his earliest memories of Cairo are idyllic, but his mother’s refusal to adapt to Egyptian life results in upheaval. At the age of four, his parents leave him in Hamburg with his German grandparents, where life becomes defined by the rigid rules of his Prussian grandfather. The desertion leaves him with a gaping hole, howling loneliness, and a longing that ripples through him. When his parents collect him five years later, they take him to England, where once again he has to adapt to being an outsider. When he eventually returns to his beloved Egypt, he was gone so long that he no longer quite fits in. His father’s premature death thrusts Meguid into an existential crisis. Facing conscription and an uncertain future, Meguid learns to navigate his own path.