Jack Mayer is a pediatrician and a writer. He began practicing pediatrics in 1976 in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, a small town in eastern Franklin County on the Canadian border. His was the first pediatric practice in that half of the county. He was a country doctor there for ten years, often bartering medical care for eggs, firewood, and knitted afghans. From 1987 to 1991 Dr. Mayer was a National Cancer Institute Fellow at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City, researching the molecular biology of childhood cancer. Most of his scientific writing was done during those four years. He was also an academic pediatrician at Columbia University's Presbyterian Medical Center. Dr. Mayer returned to Vermont in 1991 and established Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury, Vermont, where he continues to practice primary care pediatrics. He is an instructor in pediatrics at the University of Vermont School of Medicine and an adviser for premedical students at Middlebury College. Throughout his career, Dr. Mayer has written short stories, poems, and essays about his years in pediatric practice and hiking The Long Trail in Vermont. He was a participant at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 2003 and 2005 for fiction, and in 2008 for poetry. He lives in Middlebury, Vermont.
