Steven Clark Cunningham, MD, MLA, FACS
Director of Pancreatic and Hepatobiliary Surgery; Director of GME Research

Dr. Steven Clark Cunningham was born in Denver, Colorado. After graduating from Creighton University with majors in chemistry and Spanish, he complete a research fellowship in neuroscience at the National Instututes of Health and then medical school at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Having finished his residency in general surgery at the University of Maryland and fellowships in research oncology and in surgery of the liver and pancreas at Johns Hopkins University, he currently works as Director of Pancreatic and Hepatobiliary Surgery and Director of Research at Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, MD.

A member of the American Academy of Religion, Dr. Cunningham also has a master’s degree in religion from Harvard University, focusing on religious literacy in healthcare.  While at Harvard, he also served as teaching assistant for HarvardX’s MOOC (massive open online course) “Religion, Conflict and Peace.” As a surgeon and a scholar of religion, he is passionate about incorporating principles of religious literacy into healthcare and has earned a Certificate in Interfaith Leadership. His third and newest book of nonfiction poetry and prose, It’s Considerate to Be Literate about Religion: Poetry and Prose about Religion, Conflict, and Peace in Our World, for all readers 10-adult, was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award and first-place in the Social Change category of the Next Gen Indie Book Awards (proceeds donated to the nonprofit Interfaith America).  

He has served as a contributing editor of Maryland Poetry Review, and his poems have appeared in that journal. In addition, his work won the literary arts contest sponsored by the magazine The New Physician. His poems have also appeared in Chimeras, WordHouse Baltimore’s Literary Calendar, and in the anthologies Function at the Junction #2, Pasta Poetics, and Poems for Chromosomes. His first full-length book of children’s poetry, bilingual in English and Spanish, was Dinosaur Name Poems / Poemas de Nombres de Dinosaurios (Three Conditions Press, 2009), which won the 2009 Moonbeam Award in both the Children’s Poetry and the Spanish Language categories. His second book, Your Body Sick and Well: How Do You Know? (Three Conditions Press, 2020), was awarded 1st Place in Children’s Nonfiction at the 26th Annual CIPA EVVY Awards Contest, sponsored by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association, and a Gold Medal in the 14th Annual Moonbeam Awards. It was also a Finalist in the 14th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards.