Jay Baruch

Fourteen Stories: Doctors, Patients, and Other Strangers
“Jay Baruch has long been fascinated by how illness can make people strangers to their own bodies, how we all struggle to maintain control as the body decays and life slowly becomes unrecognizable, and how health professionals discover and struggle with the limits of their own competence and compassion.”

ForeWord Magazine 2007 Book of the Year Honorable Mention in the Short Story category.

“Plunging into one of Jay Baruch’s stories is like finding yourself in a busy Emergency Room at two in the morning—here you will meet characters whose lives are urgent and not always what they seem on the surface. Like his characters, Baruch’s writing is vibrant and intense, and his vision is prismatic. He speaks in many voices, among them doctor, patient, family member, medical student, and even ER janitor, and so examines the world of health and illness from many points of view. I appreciate the way Baruch acknowledges the complexity of life, and then dissects it for us into so many planes of action and consequence.”

"There are few books that have conjured such feelings of futility and powerlessness in me. But these stories can do just that precisely because of their immediacy and reality. They challenge the reader to reflect on suffering." --Medical Humanities

"...he manages to tell our stories, and he does so beautifully..." --Annals of Emergency Medicine

"Soft Landings"
Fiction--Eclectica Magazine

"Empowerment Centers"
Fiction--The Battered Suitcase

"Comfortable"
Fiction-Hamilton Stone Review

Guilt and Time: My enemies
Essay

"Fortunata"
Fiction-Bryant Literary Review

"Avignon"
Fiction--Tattoo Highway

Doctor vs. Patient: Pain Mismanagement in the ED
Essay

"The Power of Denial"
This I Believe WRNI

The Story Always Comes First
Essay