25 years of creative writing on health, illness, and healing

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— Everything BLR

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— A new set of great reads with each click —

  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • The Road to Carville

    The Road to Carville

    by Pat Tompkins. “It was a shame anyone had to go to Carville, a pity there was no cure, but Gar had been to war and knew how little fairness had to do with anything.” // continue reading

  • Finding Honey

    Finding Honey

    by Daniel Reiss. “To find honey, I must first find a bee. It’s not that hard to find a bee. I just wander the woods till I find a source of water. If I come to a creek or a… // continue reading

  • Shaking the Dead Geranium 

    Shaking the Dead Geranium 

    by Harriet Rzetelny. “By age sixteen, he’d won a full scholarship to Emory College. By eighteen, he was convinced that my mother was sucking the life fluids out of his brain and went after her with a bread knife.” // continue reading

  • I Must Have Been That Man

    I Must Have Been That Man

    by Adina Talve-Goodman. “To the left of the scar, I could see the new heart beating beneath my skin. The new double pump song of perfection replacing the one wrong beat, a single ventricle, I’d had before.” // continue reading

  • Calling Card

    Calling Card

    by Mary Luce. “It was a chilly November afternoon in a southern town so small it never made it to a map. I was in the bedroom typing when I heard the noise and then my mother’s scream. She somehow… // continue reading

  • Iambic Pentameter and the Meter of War

    Iambic Pentameter and the Meter of War

    by Diane Cameron. “In the 1940’s, a young Marine returns from China to a small Pennsylvania town. One year later finds the body of the mother-in-law sprawled on the kitchen floor and the body of the wife in the living… // continue reading

  • Glaucoma

    Glaucoma

    by Charlene Fix. “What my eyes see reminds me of under-exposed / negatives from my bygone wet photography days, / days replete with eyes—the camera’s, the enlarger’s, mine—” // continue reading

  • Letter to a Dead Mother

    Letter to a Dead Mother

    by Martha Silano. “Thinking of you as I pick up flecks of oats from the kitchen floor, / put them back in the container. You know, the five-second rule.” // continue reading

  • Homage to My Radiated Hip

    Homage to My Radiated Hip

    by Laura E. Garrard. “I am finally kind to my broken body / when she pops her hip, limps her leg. // I do not shout down my spine / but coo and coax like a loving mother…” // continue reading

As featured on PBS News Hour’s CANVAS Series

Watch PBS News Hour’s Jeffrey Brown report on BLR’s 25th Anniversary, featuring BLR Editor Danielle Ofri and past BLR writers reflecting on why poetry, storytelling, and writing matter, especially in moments of illness.

Whiting Award Winner

BLR was awarded a Whiting Literary Magazine Prize for “excellence in publishing, advocacy for writers, and a unique contribution to the strength of the overall literary community.”

Praise & Recognition