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

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  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • Bird Season

    Bird Season

    by Daniela Garvue. “After he brushed his teeth, he raised his wings in the bathroom to examine his smoky gray underfeathers.” // continue reading

  • Taxi Ride

    Taxi Ride

    by Azin Neishaboori. “It was around noon on a spring day in the month of May when Ms. Abedi appeared at the intersection of Shahrara and Sattar Khan Streets on the west side of Tehran.” // continue reading

  • Sibilance

    Sibilance

    by Leonard Post. “‘Kill me,’ he pleaded, not exactly in those words, but clothed rather in the language of assisted suicide. He had no right to ask that of me.” // continue reading

  • You Know What She Means

    You Know What She Means

    by Elizabeth Schultz. “And here is another thing you do not remember: your parents telling you that you have polio, and that they are taking you to St. Margaret’s Hospital in Northridge.” // continue reading

  • The Storm Between Us

    The Storm Between Us

    by Kelly Flanigan. “I walk into Scott’s kitchen, sweaty from basketball and needing something cold to drink, and there’s his mom in just her underwear…” // 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

  • I Wasn’t There

    I Wasn’t There

    by Subhaga Crystal Bacon. “Cancer came and took a lung, / then came and took the rest / of him. And I wasn’t there…” // continue reading

  • Oystered

    Oystered

    by Michele Parker Randall. “Would that our breasts were like oysters. / Briny, lustrous. Maybe not filter feeders, / but that they could meditate on the grit / of suicidal cells that will become the nucleus / of a pearlescent… // continue reading

  • We Are Afraid

    We Are Afraid

    by Jennifer L. Knox. “We are afraid / of junior high school students and the nauseating things / they say among their own kind…” // 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