Published Works and Awards
The Boneheap in the Lion's Den
PRAISE FOR THE BONEHEAP IN THE LION'S DEN
The poems in Maya J. Sorini's The Boneheap in the Lion's Den take us inside the intense and often gruesome world of a hospital trauma unit, a milieu both surreal and (often) deadly real. Sorini never looks away from the hard stuff—in fact, the hard stuff is where she starts—but her gorgeous, precise lines and rhythms make this book unputdownable, despite the human instinct to look away. I finished this book grateful and changed.
—Lynn Melnick, author of Refusenik and Landscape with Sex and Violence
Maya Sorini's verse travels to the frontier of life and death, staring down the sublime, probing the capacity of language. As a witness grappling with the grave responsibilities of the clinician, her poems are beautiful—alternatingly lyrical and blunt—challenging the reader to walk beside her.
—Danielle Spencer, PhD, Director, Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University
The Boneheap in the Lion's Den takes the reader to that intersection where life meets death, pain meets relief, and hope meets fear. Only a few of us live there and we do what we do so that you will hopefully be able to live as you do. Welcome to our world.
—Thomas M. Scalea, MD, Physician in Chief, Shock Trauma Center, University of Maryland Medical Center
Awards
2023: Press 53 Award for Poetry, The Boneheap in the Lion's Den
2023: Honorable mention in the 2023 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest, "Working Dogs"
2023: Longlist for Letter Review Prize for Poetry, "A Proof"
2023: Finalist for Lucky Jefferson Poetry and Prose Contest, "Insurmountable"
2022: Winner of Society of General Internal Medicine Poetry Contest, "What I Learned"
Essays, Op-Eds, and Anthologies
Essay, "The New St. Louis Arch" in Tendon Magazine- Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, 2023
Essay, "Working Dogs," Honorable mention in the 2023 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest
Op-Ed: "Pill Mills Are Back, And They're Not for Pain Anymore," Panacea: Writing for Health, July 2023
Anthology: "How You Failed Me" in The Perfect Doctor, Pager Press, 2023
Poems
"What Does a Medical Student Do All Day?" Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, November 2023
"Insurmountable" Lucky Jefferson, October 2023
"Mars" Doximity: Op-Med, October 2023
"Fledgling" Ripple Magazine, September 2023
"Mudded Water" Auxocardia, July 2023
"What It's Like Off Shift" Auxocardia, June 2022
"Now That the Kids Have Gotten Their Shots" Doximity: Op-Med, June 2022
"The Doorbell Rings, I Am Off My Meds" Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, May 2022
"Trauma Surgeon Ars Poetica." Journal of the American Medical Association: Poetry and Medicine, May 2022
"The Body Only Speaks Her Own Language" Tofu Ink Arts Press, March 2022
"Psalm for My Body" Tofu Ink Arts Press, March 2022
"Bone Seam Song" Tofu Ink Arts Press, March 2022
"Precious Metals." Doximity: Op-Med, 2022
"In Defense of the ICD System" Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, December 2021
"The Patron Saint of Broken Glass" Tendon Magazine- Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, January 2021
"Endings" Tendon Magazine- Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, January 2021
"New Dreams" Tendon Magazine- Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, January 2021
"Hurting Instructions" Tendon Magazine- Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, January 2020
"Losing Her" Tendon Magazine- Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine, January 2020