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

  • Issue 50
  • Issue 49
  • Issue 48

  • all
  • news
  • events
  • interviews

— Everything BLR

— See what’s new with us at BLR

— Come join us, online, or in person —

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

— A new set of great reads with each click —

  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • Reflexes

    Reflexes

    by Adriana Golden. “…what started as an alibi could be a salvation. Yesterday, I flushed the rest of the pills down the toilet, all at once. They flocked out of sight like a swarm of tiny pink beetles.” // continue reading

  • The Veil Thins

    The Veil Thins

    by Fiona Ennis. “She was being tugged somewhere unearthly, towards a radiant light source, the same colour as those long fluorescent white lights that buzzed in the kitchen in the convent.” // continue reading

  • Shaking the Dead Geranium 

    Shaking the Dead Geranium 

    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

  • Remembering Appleman

    Remembering Appleman

    “If I can’t help your mother,” Appleman said to me, “then I’ll help you build some armor against her rages.”  // continue reading

  • Drawing Blood

    Drawing Blood

    I spent a lot of time thinking about blood during my training years—hoping I could get enough of it, wondering which vein would yield the best supply of it, wishing the patients had more of it, calling the blood bank… // continue reading

  • Breathing

    Breathing

    My office is quiet except for the noise I make: the click of the light switch, the hum of the computer, the crinkle of my paper gown as I unwrap it. I pull on my PPE—gown, gloves, mask, and goggles—makeshift… // continue reading

  • In the Hospital 

    In the Hospital 

    by David Lehman. “In the hospital there was time / to read to dream to act / to read Freud’s dream book on his couch / and how his best thoughts came to him / in the hospital during /… // continue reading

  • Wilderness

    Wilderness

    by Paula Bohince. “My sister drove, / so long that what began before daybreak / ended in the same pitch, / and we barely noticed those in-between hours, // though this morning we laughed…” // continue reading

  • After the Arachnid

    After the Arachnid

    by James Gonda. “In the shed behind the house where / garden tools lean in a corner there / was a spider, black and still, as large / as a thumbprint tucked behind a spade…” // 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