For 25 years, Bellevue Literary Review has been publishing stories, essays, and poems that take readers into the shared space where art and medicine meet. Throughout our anniversary year, we’re marking this incredible milestone by inviting you on a journey through the BLR archive, from the beginning through the present.
Join us each week as we curate special highlights — stories, poems, photos, and more — from each of our issues.
About the Issue
This issue introduced the annual BLR Literary Prizes (still going strong and currently open for submission!). The inaugural judges were Ray Gonzalez (fiction), Abraham Verghese (nonfiction), and Edward Hirsch (poetry).
From the Foreword
“Through our work at the Bellevue Literary Review, the editors continue to learn about medicine’s promise and its limitations…. The promise of cure has existed through the ages. From bloodletting to chemotherapy, medicine always has offered hope. When a solution for a disease exists, even partial, life can go on. However, illness extends its tentacles past any single episode of disease. There is the crisis, and for those fortunate to withstand it, the aftermath. How can I live with the anxiety that a disease may recur? Or live with chronic illness? How can a person embrace life fully after losing someone close? What are the reverberations, not just for the patient, but for family and friends?”
– Ronna Wineberg, Founding Fiction Editor
Read Highlights from Issue 10
Each week, we’ll be highlighting one outstanding story, poem, and essay from the featured issue. We encourage you to explore more from the issue on our website or, better yet, to pick up a copy!
The Little Things
by Joan Malerba-Foran
She stands sideways in the middle of the hallway, her bloated backpack blocking traffic from both directions. Today, however, I am in no mood. I’d spent the previous night grading eighty-one essays and, when I finally did make it to bed, it was for a slim six hours crammed between leg cramps and Technicolor nightmares….
… I’ve never been what you would call a good sleeper. I make it through the night about twice a week, and those nights are never consecutive. I’ve been to counselors, therapists, and psychologists, but always for ancillary issues: a marriage that was on the rocks, a job that was on the rocks. The truth is, at forty-five, my world is on the rocks because (according to my ex-husband) I drink too much and too often.
The Color of Sound
by Judy Rowley
“It will be like hearing in Technicolor instead of black and white.”
I had never thought of my hearing as being “black and white” but that is exactly what it must be, compared to people with normal hearing. For a moment I allowed myself to wander inside this color movie of possibility and compare it with my current “black and white” audiological existence, which is currently reduced to stark basics. I knew it wasn’t quite as simple as that. Life contextualizes: it exaggerates, diminishes, languishes. Body movement, personal feelings, expressions, and physical touch also play a role. What about language itself, its extraordinary range of vocabulary?
Worry Bone
by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
Woke gnawing its remains. Air
had the brackish tinge of depths I had
all night been swimming in. No bird song
rose from the vine-covered fence
that my room looks out on—not even
the pigeons’ manic calls. I talked
myself down from the bed…
Children were often hospitalized for months, and, in some cases, years. Many of the poor and overburdened parents had difficulty visiting their children, and visiting hours were strictly limited (sometimes only twice a week). The Substitute Mothers Program was created so that volunteers could spend recreational time with the children.
The Substitute Mothers Program founded the Children of Bellevue program in 1949. Children of Bellevue still exists, with a mission to make healthcare more accessible and equitable through programs at Bellevue Hospital that are open to kids across New York City.
This photo was most likely taken by the Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s or 1960s.
(Photo courtesy of Bellevue Hospital Archives)