Surgeon and writer Richard Selzer was born in Troy, New York, graduated from Union college in 1948 and received his M.D. from Albany Medical College in 1953. After completing a surgical internship and residency at Yale University in 1960, Dr. Selzer remained as Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery until 1985 in addition to maintaining a private practice.

Selzer's writing career began in the 1970's with the publication of Rituals of Surgery (1973), his first collection of short stories. Since then he published Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (1976), Confessions of a Knife (1979), a collection of 24 essays, roughly half of which are surgical memoirs, Letters to a Young Doctor (1982), and his most recent collection, Taking the World in for Repairs (1986), Imagine a Woman (five novellas) (1990) and A Mile and a Half of Ink (a diary) (1990).

Making use of a vast store of information and experiences from his medical career, Selzer's tales of the sick and diseased, while often startling and shocking, are filled with compassion and a certain awe for the mystery of the human body.