Arden Hegele grew up on the west coast of Canada. She writes about literature and the history of ideas. Her first book, Romantic Autopsy, told the story of how the great poets and novelists of Regency-era England drew inspiration from medicine—and how they changed medicine in turn. Her second, Culture and Medicine, which she wrote with Dr. Rishi Goyal, was a collection of essays exploring how medical knowledge is constructed and circulated within the arts. She cofounded the journal Synapsis, which develops a public conversation between humanities scholars and physicians.

Her forthcoming biography Byron: A New Portrait reveals its imperfect hero as a thoroughly modern, self-aware person whose story tells us more about our world today than it did in his own moment. Written as the bicentenary of Lord Byron’s death is celebrated around the world, the book begins with his postmortem examination.

She lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University, where she is Lecturer in the Discipline of English and Comparative Literature. She has received a fellowship from The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities. She also serves on the board of Creatives Care, a non-profit providing access to mental healthcare for artists and musicians.