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
  • Geese

    Geese

    by Grace Glass. “Mornings, Adam struggles up from his dreams to a blinding, ochre-tinged pain that sizzles up his damaged spine, seizes his neck, etches spiteful hieroglyphics into the base of his skull. He can’t help groaning but he does… // continue reading

  • Mud

    Mud

    by Ben Orlando. “I saw the man before he died, under the front tire of my father’s truck. He was pinned and the truck stalled and then settled in the mud and three grown men were not enough to push… // continue reading

  • Assisted Living

    Assisted Living

    by Louise Aronson. “Mary’s not at dinner and no one knows why. Roy is limping but at least he’s up walking again after last month when he fell by the mailboxes and dislocated his new knee.” // continue reading

  • Songs from the Black Chair

    Songs from the Black Chair

    by Charles Barber. “A thousand men each year sit in the black chair next to my desk. I am a mental health worker at the Bellevue Men’s Shelter.” // continue reading

  • By My Own Hand

    By My Own Hand

    by Anita Darcel Taylor. “Mental anguish can be as unruly as any terminal illness. It can, unfortunately, orchestrate its own end.” // 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

  • Elegy for My Gypsy Grandmother

    Elegy for My Gypsy Grandmother

    by Brandi George. “She was starving, and I have never eaten dirt, so how can anyone forgive me? In 1933, there is no time; want impregnates blood as ashes are stirred by my grandmother’s hand…” // continue reading

  • Appendectomy

    Appendectomy

    by Alexandra Ozols. “…so I worry and know that everything / is not fine which sends my heart galloping / like a horse turned wild by gunshots…” // continue reading

  • Thought Experiment

    Thought Experiment

    by Steven Cramer. “Before my pupils gape oh in unison, / I find a seat with the semi-sighted / like myself, becalmed / in our separate intermissions…” // 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