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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 21 highlights
A look back to our 10th anniversary, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year. // continue reading
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What We’re Reading Now
Looking for your next literary escape? Here are some recommended reads from our editorial team. // continue reading
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BLR 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 BLR writers reflecting on why poetry, storytelling, and writing matter, especially in moments of illness. // continue reading
— See what’s new with us at BLR —
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BLR BookTalk with Author Morgan Talty
Join us on June 11 for a live conversation as we dive into Morgan’s book Fire Exit, which was the inaugural selection for BLR’s new Book Club. // continue reading
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BLR Spring Reading with Authors from Issue 50
Join us on May 28 to celebrate the launch of Issue 50. We’ll hear from the issue’s authors live as they share their stories, essays, and poems. // continue reading
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Announcing the BLR Book Club pick
We’re excited to announce our first pick for the BLR Book Club: Fire Exit, a novel by Morgan Talty. Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, The New Yorker, ELLE, NPR, and Harper’s… // continue reading
— Come join us, online, or in person —
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BLR BookTalk with Author Morgan Talty
Join us on June 11 for a live conversation as we dive into Morgan’s book Fire Exit, which was the inaugural selection for BLR’s new Book Club. // continue reading
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BLR Spring Reading with Authors from Issue 50
Join us on May 28 to celebrate the launch of Issue 50. We’ll hear from the issue’s authors live as they share their stories, essays, and poems. // continue reading
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Writing the Body: Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare
Writing the Body, part of BLR’s Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare series, brings together four best-selling authors whose work confronts illness as it is lived in the body. // continue reading
— Read interviews with BLR authors, editors, readers, and more —
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Interview: Lara Palmqvist
“The very idea that no story is final—be it the story of one’s own self, or the story of a nation—is ultimately something in which I find great hope.” // continue reading
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Interview: Sabah Parsa
“Humor is the easiest for me to write in any piece, fiction or nonfiction.” // continue reading
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Interview: Jack Coulehan
“Clinical care provides the subject matter for many of my poems, and some of the themes I explore in them…have driven a process of self-discovery that I think has made me a better doctor.” // continue reading
— A new set of great reads with each click —
- fiction
- nonfiction
- poetry
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Looking at Aquaman
by Kim Foster. “Something nobody warns you about, when you get very sick, is that you have to be polite. You have to be Emily f-ing Post every minute of the day…” // continue reading
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A Brutal Sweetness
by Abby Nance. “Last night my breath changed from quiet to labored heaving. We all wonder: will this be my last bath?” // continue reading
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If Brains Was Gas
by Abraham Verghese. “I turned thirteen that week. I assumed that it came with some new liberties, but no one had specifically said so, and I was too uncertain to ask. Still, the night after my birthday, Elmo and me… // continue reading
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A Pure and Lovely Flame
by Sandy Woodson. “For Descartes, the pineal gland is a magical place where our souls and personality and identity shimmer in a night sky.” // continue reading
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A Figment of Your Imagination
by Cynthia-Marie O’Brien. “I am a figment of your imagination. You may laugh skeptically, and I admit there is much that would seem to prove I am anything but…” // continue reading
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Lost Vessels
by Jehanne Dubrow. “Memory is not kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing damaged ceramics with a mixture of lacquer and powdered gold. There are ugly seams. There is no glittering dust poured into the fractures between sentences.” // continue reading
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Lithium and the Absence of Desire
by Virginia Chase Sutton. “It is not advertised on the pill bottle, merely mentioned / in the product description from the drug store. / You have no idea what you are giving away.” // continue reading
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Ordinary Psalm with Near Blindness
by Julia B. Levine. “The world mostly gone, I make it what I want: / from the balcony, the morning is a silver robe of mist / I make a reckless blessing of it…” // continue reading
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Printouts
by Dylan Landis. “Janet reported that gray taffeta / curtained her walls. It was delicate. When touched, the ashen silk dissolved / around her thumbprint….” // 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
``With every issue, Bellevue Literary Review probes our understanding of the human body and mind in new ways. It is essential reading for anyone who deals with sickness and health, anyone interested in narrative medicine, anyone who simply needs a dose of deep grace and humanity.”
“The editors have produced a journal of uncommon literary quality.”
“I subscribe and receive literally hundreds of magazines every year. Of all those magazines, none stands out more than Bellevue Literary Review.”
“These two non-fiction pieces in BLR are powerful, honest, and heartrending. They lifted me up because of the truths released onto the pages. Both deal with problems our family is suffering through, so on a personal level, the authors are helping me grapple.”
“BLR's contents are at once practically instructive, and yet intangibly inspiring and utterly gripping. I can’t imagine my work as a writer, or a doctor, without it.”
“After reading it cover to cover, I came away walloped by the breadth and depth of the pain it highlights.”
“No human thing is more universal than illness, in all its permutations, and no literary publication holds more credibility on the subject than Bellevue Literary Review.”
“A kaleidoscope of creativity. . . The selections are unsentimental and often unpredictable.”
“What is most impressive about BLR, though, is how the editors can stretch their own boundaries.”
“Ask any healthcare worker, ask any patient who has come back from illness and fear, and you will hear stories that might change your life. That's what BLR offers.”
“BLR is loyal to its theme but never constrained by it, uncovering boundless tonal and narrative possibilities as it contemplates the body as a physical entity, probes the manifestation of mental illness, or reckons with how the racialized and gendered body is perceived.”
“BLR is open to many modes and styles of work; it has no house style except humanity (though excellent editing doesn't hurt either).”





















