Maya Sorini, an award-winning poet and medical student, reflects: “Writing is how I accomplish that reflexively human behavior of reaching out.”
Maya J. Sorini, at 28, is a dynamic force in both the literary and medical fields. Guided by her personal credo, “Hold the people in your life accountable for making the world a better place, starting with yourself,” Maya is pursuing this mission with determination and creativity.
A native of Rockville, MD, Maya is in her fourth year of medical school at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in Nutley, New Jersey. Her journey through medicine is complemented by her distinguished work as a poet and narrative medicine scholar. Her debut poetry collection, The Boneheap in the Lion's Den, won the 2023 Press 53 Award for Poetry and was a semifinalist in the Poetry of Virginia’s North American Poetry Book Award. Maya’s poetry explores the intense realities of trauma care and the human condition, blending her clinical experiences with profound lyricism. Her poetry and essays have been featured in prestigious journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Journal of Medical Humanities, and Intima Magazine.
Academically, she earned a B.A. in Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis, where she also engaged in clinical trauma surgery research. She furthered her education with a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, where she taught and facilitated workshops in the field. Maya currently balances her role as a rotating medical student at Albany Medical Center in Albay, NY with her ongoing work as a freelance Narrative Medicine workshop facilitator and lecturer. She also has conducted a half dozen Ground Rounds, lectures, poetry readings at Hackensack University and health networks across the country.
Prescribing Poetry for Healing
“My writing would not exist without my work in medicine,” says Maya. “The emotional intensity of work in healthcare fuels the poetry I write. I find that my poetry writes itself; it just pours out of me. One of the things I love so much about narrative medicine is that it allows patients and doctors who are struggling with illness or pain permission to talk about it, that we can talk to patients about their hurt, and to feel ours. All of us are one day going to be patients and that is why narrative medicine is for everyone. The more openly clinicians can speak about their emotions, the better patients can understand what it is like to walk in our shoes, and when we listen to their stories, we can better understand what they are going through.”
Maya’s commitment to both her writerly craft and her medical profession is a testament to her belief in the power of narrative in making meaningful changes in the world. She knows firsthand that during times of trauma and illness, writing verse helps her process her grief. She says it also helps her be more fully present to her patients to allow them to also bear witness to their pain.
“I’ve been constantly, constantly told in my medical training by others in the profession — from nurses and technicians to residents and attendings — that I am going to stop caring. That I am ‘too nice,’ and that they used to be like me but had to toughen up.
“But narrative medicine has allowed me to cry when I am holding a dying baby, to go home and write a poem about it and feel it. I tell younger medical students that they have permission to hurt and ‘you are allowed to care about your patients and show that care.’ We are cups of love, and our job is to carry that love and give it to our next patient,” she adds.
Poetry Mirrors Lifelong Love of Reading and Writing
Named after Maya Angelou, Maya’s passion for literature and writing has been inspired by the influential American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.
“Poetry started pouring out of me the moment I started working in a hospital, without me having much say in the matter,” says Maya.
Growing up the daughter of a utilities company professional and a homemaker, Maya says her family was initially reticent about my career choice.
“They kind of suggested I could go into business, make a lot of money and retire at 40,” she says. “But I took every kind of job I could to explore science and caring for people, from nannying to working in a biomedicine and chemistry research lab in high school.”
During college, she worked in clinical research for the trauma surgery department of an urban hospital in St. Louis, MO.
“I fell in love with medicine and never wanted to work anywhere else than in a hospital.”
She also discovered the power of marrying medicine and her passion for writing.
“As I saw more and more suffering, lost more and more patients, the poems started to appear. There was no way to stop the poetry, and I have found that the more of myself I give to the craft, the more I benefit from the creative catharsis of writing.”
Along the way, Maya describes how “poetry is a life force of its own that pours out of me like lava.”
“I’ll have to pull over to the side of the road, or I wake up from a deep sleep, jot down notes outside patient rooms and in notebooks and scribble notes in the margins of my charts,” says Maya. “I’ve never had writer’s block.”
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Join Now >Today, her parents and three siblings are Maya’s greatest champions.
“I was raised in a very nurturing family where everyone took care of each other, and my parents always showed up for anyone that needed them. I was raised to show up and help people no matter what.”
“It was the human thing to do.”
During college, Maya learned firsthand what it is like to suffer trauma as a patient. She was involved in a serious car accident in a Louisiana hospital emergency room, across the country from friends and family, scared and suffering from broken bones, a concussion, and other injuries.
“I was the patient who had to have her clothes cut off of her,” she says. “I remember thinking ‘who the hell is going to come get me?’ Thank God I had co-workers at the time who came and cared for me. But I suffered from PTSD for a long time. That experience has shown me what it must feel like to be a patient and how we need to be present for the hurt and suffering.”
These days she is driven about walking the walk and modeling this caring for other medical students: “It is our job to show we care.”
Maya's story is a powerful testament to empathy and the human side of healthcare. Her experience as a trauma patient profoundly shaped her understanding of what it means to truly care for others. It’s clear that her own vulnerability and the support she received during her recovery have influenced her approach to patient care.
In the emergency room, when faced with the young patient in severe pain, Maya's decision to prioritize human connection over rigid protocols reflects her commitment to compassionate care. By encouraging her colleague to hold the patient's hand, Maya demonstrated that sometimes the most important aspect of treatment is emotional support.
“I just looked at the other student, and said, ‘You are allowed to do this,’ and took one of his hands and asked her to hold his other hand. I didn’t care that the supervisor would not approve this. It was the human thing to do. I gave her permission to do it. No patient should ever be left behind in healthcare.”
The Mindworks Questionnaire
- What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A soft day- sitting quietly at a remote lake, stream, lookout point, spending time sitting with nature and doing “nothing.”
- Who are your favorite writers?
Poets would be Richard Siken, Natalie Diaz, and Robert Frost, in that each of them have collections I come back to over and over again.
- Describe yourself in six words.
Pack people’s bags with great love.
- What are you most grateful for?
My family. I grew up with spectacular parents who went beyond providing and keeping my siblings and I safe, and modeled for us generosity and community in the ways they build their world around them. My sisters and brother are some of my heroes, too; over the years, I am so grateful to have the chance to watch them continue to grow and exceed the versions of themselves I have loved before. I annoy my siblings (a lot) but without them my life would be duller, emptier.
- What’s next on your bucket list?
Getting to introduce myself as Dr. Sorini! My first work in clinical medicine started almost 10 years ago, and so getting to this milestone of graduating medical school and starting residency is a relief and a joy.
