Margaret Varnell Clark
Margaret Ann Cynthia Varnell Clark,(born in New Orleans, Louisiana) is a writer and editor. She holds licenses as a registered nurse, registered respiratory therapist, and neonatal pediatric specialist. She has worked in print and television, both in the medical field and the general media.
Career
She was a columnist for Advance News Magazines beginning in 1990 until the news agencies reorganization in 2010. Concurrently, she wrote for several news agencies including Reuters Health. In 2004 she became the Editorial Director for Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Medscape/WebMD, and the Pulmonary Medicine Editor of the peer review journal MedGenMed.She held these positions until 2009. She has a strong clinical medicine background which includes working as the Clinical Coordinator for Respiratory Care, at Boston University/ Boston Medical Center in Massachusetts and as the Special Studies Coordinator for the Georgia Medical Care Foundation where she conducted the national pilot collaborative, Chronic Kidney Disease in Patients with Cardiovascular Disease. As a medical researcher, she continues to publish in the areas of health outcomes assessment and educational effectiveness. She served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Shakespeare Festival at Tulane University in her home town of New Orleans from 1997–2000 and the Director of the Swan Series for the Shakespeare Festival at Tulane from 1997 - 1999. She was also the President of the Southeast Chapter of the American Medical Writers Association from 2004–2005; and worked on several boards/committees for the American College of Chest Physicians. She often lectures in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Central America. In 2014 she completed a successful lecture series in Indonesia and Singapore, where one of her books is widely used as the standard of care for asthma. Among the awards she has received are the Bird Award given at the American Association of Respiratory Care Annual Conference for her extensive writing in Pulmonary Medicine and the 2010 D. Robert McCaffree, MD, Master FCCP Humanitarian Award given by the Chest Foundation, American College of Chest Physicians. Clark continues to work on television and web multimedia programs.
Bibliography
Her books include:
- Inspiration: Your Guide to Better Breathing Good Communications Inc/Fowler & Wells (1998)
- The Louisiana Irish
- Asthma: a Clinicians' Guide Jones & Bartlett Learning (2010) This book has been translated into various languages and is used in many countries.
- Walking Through Rome
She has also written 40 peer reviewed academic publications on William Shakespeare for the Shakespeare Bulletin from 1995–2001 and is cited in the in The Tragedy of King Richard III, published in 2001 and 2008 by Oxford University Press.
Television
She started working as a writer for WYES-TV in her hometown of New Orleans in 1996. Her television work includes:
- Steppin’ Out (writer, producer, 1996–2000)
- Write for You (writer, 2000)
- Dinner with Francis (writer, 2001)