In Fall 2014, Penguin’s Gotham Books will be publishing Cristin’s second book of nonfiction: Dr. Mütter’s Marvels: Thomas Dent Mütter and the Dawn of Modern Medicine.

Aptowicz was named the 2010-2011 University of Pennsylvania, Kelly Writers House ArtsEdge Writer-in-Residence specifically to work on “this project. The Mütter Museum also granted Aptowicz full access to their museum, library and archives for the duration of the residency so that she may conduct her research for the book, and the Mütter Museum’s Francis C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine has additionally awarded Aptowicz with a Wood Institute Travel Grant to help further fund and support her work on this project.

Previously, Aptowicz penned the non-fiction screenplay, Mütter, a screenplay based on the life of Mütter Museum founder Thomas Dent Mütter. The screenplay would go on to win the 2003 “Set In Philadelphia” Screenwriting Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship at the 2004 Hampton International Film Festival. In 2005, she was invited to attend the 2005 Sloan Film Summit in support of the screenplay, and was commissioned to write an article about her experiences at the Su
mmit by New York City’s Museum of the Moving Image. As of 2008, the screenplay remains unproduced, although a short based on the feature-length script was created as a part of the Philadelphia Film Festival prize package.

In 2008, Soft Skull Press published Aptowicz’s Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote that the book “leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature” and the Washington Post named it one of five Notable Books on Exploring Poetry in 2008. Aptowicz spent 4 years writing the book, which “explores the birth, growing pains and continuing development of the Poetry Slam.” The book features interviews with Saul Williams, Maggie Estep, Bob Holman and Slamnation director Paul Devlin, among others.

Aptowicz’s non-fiction essays and articles have been published in a variety of publications, including mainstream magazines such as Bust magazine, scholarly journals such as Humor and anthologies such as Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution.