Dr. Martin Blaser, publisher of The BLR, and Dr. Danielle Ofri, the journal’s editor-in-chief. (Photo by John Abbott)

Words for a Sunday Afternoon

In Bellevue’s Rotunda, an Event of Singular Intimacy

“Are you excited?” Denise Burrell-Stinson asked her friend. “Are you totally psyched?”

“Yes!” said Amanda McCormick, an aspiring fiction writer, her ponytail flapping. “Yes!”

McCormick was at Bellevue Hospital Center on a recent rainy Sunday to read from her short story, “White Space,” about a young New Yorker numbed in the months after 9/11. More than 100 visitors had gathered in the rotunda for, of all things, a literary reading. The Bellevue Literary Review was holding its 16th semiannual reading, this one for its Spring 2009 issue, complete with cookies and wine. Outside, just beyond the murals, vines of ivy swathed the wet windows facing First Avenue.

The BLR, as it’s known, has entered its eighth year of publishing short stories, poems, and essays about life at its most vulnerable—and inspirational. “It’s about life expressed through the prism of the medical experience,” said the journal’s co-founder and publisher, Martin Blaser, MD, the Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine, chairman of the Department of Medicine, and professor of microbiology.

Since its birth in 2000, The BLR has established itself as a unique journal of the medical humanities, the only literary publication that originates from a department of medicine, with three physicians on its editorial staff. Subscriptions have climbed to 2,000, and submissions now average about 300 a month. The Journal of the American Medical Association called The BLR “a kaleidoscope of creativity.” Copies are sold nationally in Barnes & Noble.

The readings are held mainly to create a sense of literary community. “We want Bellevue to be a place for creativity,” said Danielle Ofri, MD, the journal’s co-founder and editor-in-chief. In addition to being an attending physician at Bellevue, Dr. Ofri, assistant professor of medicine, is the author of two collections of essays, including Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue. “The idea of having literature in a hospital should be more common.”

Kalindi Akolekar Handler, an English teacher for 20 years, read an excerpt from “Baba,” a short story about a New Jersey teenager (herself) who spent several summers “Baba-sitting” her grandfather, now riddled with vascular dementia. Originally The BLR turned the piece down but also invited her to revise it. “Best rejection letter I ever got,” she said. It’s her first published piece.

Noel Sikorski read her poem “Wishbone,” then paused. “Am I racing through this?” she asked, apparently stricken with self-consciousness. “We love you!” someone in the seats yelled back.

Then came Amanda McCormick. “She had to get to work,” she began. “She had overslept, and now she had to get to work.” At the end of the story, her friend Denise whooped from the back of the room. “I’m here for all the writers!” she later declared.

In a literary reading, writers take a private act public. Suddenly they find themselves seen and heard, the written word, courtesy of a microphone, given full voice. Throughout the entire hour, everyone who came—students, faculty, subscribers, and the literary-minded alike—stayed. No one yawned or checked for cell phone messages or whispered to a companion or even sneaked to the bathroom—ultimate proof that literature read aloud, even amid the bustle of Bellevue, can cast a spell.

Afterward, Dr. Blaser acknowledged his deepest intention about The BLR. “My hope,” he said, “is for it still to be here 50 years from now.”

For information about how to subscribe to The Bellevue Literary Review, visit www.blreview.org/.

Web Extra: For articles by and about NYU Langone’s physician-writers, see the article, A Double Life—and a Doubly Rewarding One at That.