I am an award-winning freelance journalist based in Brooklyn (formerly based in Providence, R.I.), an erstwhile fact-checker at Esquire, and an Adjunct Lecturer in the English Department at Brooklyn College. I recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction from the New School, where my graduate thesis was a book-length work of narrative journalism about hepatitis C and addiction. This is not a blog, but rather a collection of some of my work.

My favorite stories are about people: people who do unlikely or awe-inspiring things, people with dreams and visions and singular voices, people and communities whose voices are marginalized or forgotten by the popular press. I have a special interest in the criminal justice system and health care for the underserved and disenfranchised, particularly HIV/AIDS. (Before I became a journalist, I worked as an outreach worker and research assistant at an HIV clinic.) I also write news and book reviews, and have been known to write enthusiastically about music, politics, contraception, and goofy antics.

Thanks for stopping by to take a look at my clips.

Curve>Out In Front>The Good Doctor





The Good Doctor

By Beth Schwartzapfel
April 2006

“I did not want to work with teenagers,” recalls physician Husna Baksh with a laugh. It was the early 1990s and Baksh was in the middle of her medical residency at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. She had “kicked and screamed” about the requirement to spend a few weeks studying adolescent medicine, but all that changed when the physician who had been assigned as Baksh’s teacher and mentor got a phone call. The distraught mother of a teenage boy who had just come out had called the one person she could think of who cared as much about her son’s health and well-being as she did – his doctor. “She spoke to that boy’s mom so skillfully and lovingly,” Baksh recalls. Baksh had only recently come out as a lesbian to her own parents, so this phone call struck a chord.

Baksh, 44, is now takes care of her own patients, gay and straight, from “teenagers to very elderly folks,” at her Silver Springs, Md., practice. As such, in September she was awarded GayHealth.com and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association’s Provider of the Year Award for 2005. Though her practice is not aimed specifically at the gay community, Baksh estimates that 40 percent of her patients are LGBT. “By focusing on gay health, I’ve learned to be a better provider to all people,” she says. Her work with gay patients has helped her learn how “to get a sense of the whole person. I don’t think there’s a lot of providers out there taking the time to say, ‘how’s your personal life? What’s your stress level right now?’” Baksh herself is a firm believer in the power of movement to maintain “a healthy emotional/physical balance,” and named her practice Healthy Steps in honor of her love for dance and athletics. In fact, she and her partner danced in the International/Latin competition at the 1998 Gay Games in Amsterdam. One day Baksh hopes to integrate her two passions: both practicing medicine and teaching and studying dance. In the meantime, she is growing Healthy Steps, taking care of patients, and demonstrating, by her actions, why this award – and her work – is so important. She has heard enough of her patients’ horror stories to know that “homophobia is a health hazard.”
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