This month, I am so pleased to welcome Megan O'Rourke to Gapfest Reads.

Megan has written a really engrossing book called The Invisible Kingdom.

The subtitle is Reimagining Chronic Illness.

This is a book about a silent epidemic of chronic illnesses that afflict tens of millions of Americans.

Often, the diseases that Megan is writing about are poorly understood and frequently marginalized and undiagnosed altogether.

It's a harrowing book because of the subject matter, but it's not at all harrowing to read.

I actually found it to be kind of a page-turner.

And because Megan is a poet and incredibly discerning reader, it's infused with beauty and joy from literature about all kinds of topics.

So, Megan, you're investigating this elusive category of, quote, invisible illness.

Autoimmune diseases, post-treatment, Lyme disease syndrome, and now Long COVID.

Just tell us a little bit about how this began for you.

First of all, thank you so much.

Emily, this is one of the first times I'm hearing my book described by a reader.

And it's so illuminating actually because I think I really worried that this would be a book characterized by

the narrative of chronic illness, which is recurrent and repetitive, right?

So, I did work really hard to try to give it a shape.

And I'm in a strange way, please, to hear that it's a harrowing page-turner.

But the book began for me, I think, in that experience of being in the grips of a melez I had no name for.

My experience of getting sick was one that happened slowly over time and not dramatically.

I opened the book by comparing it to Hemingway's description of going broke, gradually, and then suddenly.

So, it was a little bit like someone walking slowly into ever deeper water.

I just didn't feel great. I had strange symptoms, you know, headaches, brain fog, strange bouts of fatigue.

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