Topped by the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Tinkers, the 21 titles published so far by Bellevue Literary Press are displayed by editorial director Erika Goldman, publisher Dr. Jerome Lowenstein (left), and assistant editor Leslie Hodgkins (right).

The Little Publisher That Could

Department of Medicine's Bellevue Literary Press Garners Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

As book publishing enterprises go, you can't get much smaller than Bellevue Literary Press (BLP): one room, one desk, one window, two staffers. But good things, as they say, come in small packages. That was clearly the lesson learned in April, when Tinkers, an equally minimalist novel by first-time author Paul Harding, published in 2009 by BLP, was awarded the coveted Pulitzer Prize for fiction—the first time in 30 years that a title issued by a small, independent press has done so.

Tucked away on the sixth floor of Old Bellevue, its office is within the headquarters of the Department of Medicine, whose chairman, Martin Blaser, MD, the Frederick H. King Professor of Medicine, is the founder and publisher of the Bellevue Literary Review, the journal that paved the way for BLP's existence. Half a century ago, the celebrated essayist Lewis Thomas, MD, served as dean of NYU School of Medicine, laying the foundation for a tradition of literary humanism at NYU Langone Medical Center. Today, our faculty includes several distinguished authors, among them Gerald Weissmann, MD, professor of medicine (a BLP author); Perri Klass, MD, professor of pediatrics and journalism; and Jerome Lowenstein, MD, professor of medicine, BLP's founder and publisher.

As the only trade book literary press in the country that's housed within an academic medical center, BLP is unique within the worlds of publishing and medicine. From the start, NYU Langone Medical Center has provided the press with space, services, and in-kind support, and recently, both NYU School of Medicine and New York University have made generous contributions. Its operations, however, are primarily financed by foundation grants, private donors to NYU Langone Medical Center, and revenues from book sales.

News of the award reached Erika Goldman, BLP's editorial director, only minutes before the announcement was posted on the Pulitzer Prize website, when a reporter from the Associated Press, who got word in advance, called her for comment.

The manuscript had been passed along to Goldman, a veteran editor who has worked at Scribner and Simon & Schuster, by a colleague at another small press who felt that it wasn't quite right for his imprint. "It sang out to me," she recalls. "For the first time in my career, a submission brought me to tears within a few pages. I knew right away I wanted to publish it." In October 2007, she called Harding, then an instructor of creative writing at Harvard, to accept it.

" 'I want to make sure I've read the book you felt you wrote,' " Harding recalls Goldman saying to him before she described it in detail. "She got it exactly right. From then on, I was putty in her hands." The process, Goldman says, was "a conversation, a creative dialogue." Says Harding: "She asked me all the right questions, never prescribed anything. I trusted her."

In its citation, the Pulitzer Prize fiction committee called the novel—a meditation of sorts about an elderly clock repairman dying of cancer who, in hallucinations, reconnects with his deceased father—"a powerful celebration of life." As one reviewer explained: "Tinkers is not just a novel, though it is a brilliant novel. It's an instruction manual on how to look at nearly everything. Harding takes the back off to show you the miraculous ticking of the natural world, the world of clocks, generations of family, an epileptic brain, the human soul. Harding shows us how enormous fiction can be, and how economical."

Life will never be the same for Harding, who joins the ranks of such previous recipients as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Updike, and Norman Mailer. Ditto for BLP. The Pulitzer Prize places both author and publisher squarely on the map. Random House plans to publish two new works by Harding with a six-figure advance, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted him a prestigious fellowship. Meanwhile, BLP will go back on press for at least another 80,000 copies of Tinkers to join the 15,000 already in print.

"It all has a certain Cinderella quality," notes Dr. Blaser.

"The prize will make a big difference for us," acknowledges Dr. Lowenstein, who says he now expects more of everything—submissions, titles published, and financial support. Beyond that, adds Goldman, "I hope it means that when we publish a book, people will take a closer look."