Finkbeiner, Ann K. 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born 1943; children: T.C. (deceased).

ADDRESSES:

Home—Baltimore, MD. Office—The Writing Seminars, Johns Hopkins University, 136 Gilman Hall, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218. E-mail—akf@jhu.edu.

CAREER:

Johns Hopkins University, The Writing Seminars, Baltimore, MD, associate professor and head of graduate program in science writing.

WRITINGS:

(With John G. Bartlett) The Guide to Living with HIV Infection: Developed at the Johns Hopkins AIDS Clinic, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1991, 6th edition, 2007.

After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss through the Years, Free Press (New York, NY), 1996.

The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite, Viking (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Science, Sky & Telescope, Sciences, and the New York Times Book Review. Finkbeiner's works have been translated into Spanish.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ann K. Finkbeiner is a writing professor who teaches science writing and specializes in cosmology. Her books have dealt with the emotional turmoil and physical rigors of situations involving death and terminal illness. In The Guide to Living with HIV Infection: Developed at the Johns Hopkins AIDS Clinic, Finkbeiner, along with John G. Bartlett, presents a thorough, hopeful guide to HIV and AIDS for those who suffer from the infection and for their families, loved ones, and caregivers. The authors explain the medical and biological aspects of HIV, including how it spreads, how it affects the body's immune system, and how to prevent it. They describe the HIV blood test and its purpose. In addition, they discuss the deeply troubling psychological aspects of HIV and how to cope with the emotional and social factors of the disease. Reviewer Jay Spiwek, writing in the American Family Physician, called Finkbeiner and Bartlett's work "the best book I know of for people with HIV infection." In another American Family Physician review, Nina R. Birnbaum called the book "informative and well written," and stated that it "can certainly be recommended by the physician or other primary care provider to patients and those that care about and for them." Library Journal contributor Maria S. Macias considered it to be a "potentially lifesaving and life-affirming resource" for patients and their families.

Finkbeiner turns to psychological trauma of a different kind in After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss through the Years. The death of a child can be profoundly traumatic, an event that can haunt parents, grandparents, and siblings alike for a lifetime. The debilitating effects of guilt and blame can have longterm cumulative effects on the mind and body of survivors. Finkbeiner writes from direct experience: she lost her son, T.C., when he was killed in a train wreck at age eighteen. The book chronicles her search for answers about the long-term effects of a child's death on parents and survivors, how she made contact with members of Compassionate Friends, a support group for parents who had lost a child, and on how she collected and synthesized the limited data available to her to not only help herself but to create a book that would help others. Finkbeiner looks at important areas such as immediate reactions, changes in a survivor's internal psychological world, changes in relationships with others, and the sense of loss and devastation unique to the severing of the parent-child bond. She finds, for example, that a child's death creates a "zero point," in a parent's life, "a time when everything starts over and everything looks different," noted reviewer Holly Perkins in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. "Changes occur in all arenas: within marriage, with other children, in life priorities, and in one's relationship to God," Perkins stated. A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that parents "who have lost a child will find corroboration of many of their feelings in this enlightening and heartrending study." For Perkins, the book "has an important place as a resource for those treating bereaved parents and for the bereaved themselves. The honest account of parents telling their stories certainly could help others struggling with such a loss."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Family Physician, April, 1992, Jay Spiwek, review of The Guide to Living with HIV Infection:Developed at the Johns Hopkins AIDS Clinic, p. 1952; October 1, 1999, Nina R. Birnbaum, review of After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss through the Years, p. 1580.

Johns Hopkins Magazine, April, 2000, "When Doctor Met Activist," profile of Ann Finkbeiner.

Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, September, 1997, Holly Perkins, review of After the Death of a Child, p. 1308.

Library Journal, January, 1998, Maria S. Macias, review of After the Death of a Child, p. 80.

Publishers Weekly, March 4, 1996, review of After the Death of a Child, p. 46.