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

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— Everything BLR

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— Read interviews with BLR authors, editors, readers, and more —

— A new set of great reads with each click —

  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • Getting in Trouble

    Getting in Trouble

    by Ed Meek. “I drive slowly and I know people are angry at me—hitting their horns and cursing, giving me the finger. I just smile and keep going.” // continue reading

  • What Is Buried Beneath

    What Is Buried Beneath

    by Kati Eisenhuth. “…I stand in the OR at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, after another IED explosion. Two patients are laid out on surgical tables, each with a wound that gapes and gray skin tattooed by shrapnel.” // continue reading

  • The Great Imitator

    The Great Imitator

    by Leslie Patterson. “I am a disease. My very existence poisons my father’s life.” // continue reading

  • Anticipatory Grief

    Anticipatory Grief

    by Misty Kiwak Jacobs. “After Father Marcel died, he came to me in a dream and said, “I liked you very much.” Not the Great Commandment that he kept, his job description. Gloriously less…Those words his imprimatur on my grief.” // continue reading

  • Dispatch From Bewilderness

    Dispatch From Bewilderness

    by Judith Hannah Weiss. “Probes puncture my scalp, surveying my mind. Temporal lobe, occipital lobe, you name it; there’s a probe for the lobe.” // continue reading

  • Untitled post 19551

    by Joan Kip. “It’s now eighteen months since Art died, and while he continues to inhabit the depths of my house, that place where our souls meet, the upper stories still feel his absence.” // 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