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
  • Admonition

    Admonition

    by Benjamin Kessler. “They’ve formed a barricade…Mountain goats stand shoulder to shoulder across the narrow two-lane. They appear unbothered by the idling of my car’s engine, content to simply stand and chew dry grass sprouted between asphalt cracks.” // continue reading

  • Failed Treaties

    Failed Treaties

    by Sahar Mustafah. “Danny used to open the door and let me into his apartment downstairs at seven a.m. every Saturday. My mother would already be up, stooped over the kitchen table in our upstairs apartment, wearing her pale-blue nightdress, spreading tangy lebanah… // continue reading

  • The Cult of Me

    The Cult of Me

    by Allison Amend. “I’m not a suspicious person; I think that the quickest way between two points is a straight line and that the simplest explanation is the truest. I don’t care if our atmosphere is being eaten away by… // continue reading

  • Of Mothers and Monkeys

    Of Mothers and Monkeys

    by Caitlin Kuehn. “My medical knowledge is limited to what I have learned here at the lab. All of it applicable only to non-human mammals.” // continue reading

  • The Tag

    The Tag

    by Elizabeth Crowell. “Dr. H’s earnestness was more apparent the second time we met with him, when we weren’t hearing the bad news for the first time. In a full-lit room not dimmed for ultrasounds, he was a handsome, dark-haired… // continue reading

  • The Father Shift

    The Father Shift

    by Trish Travieso. “I was twenty-three years old the first time I saw my father wearing a dress.” // continue reading

  • Elegy with a Horse in a Field

    Elegy with a Horse in a Field

    by Subhaga Crystal Bacon. “What can I tell you of this cool morning, / mid-August, the sky clear, sun on the bare / pine floor, a book of poems, dog asleep, / the house quiet…” // continue reading

  • Monitor

    Monitor

    by Jerome Ellison Murphy. “Now it’s loose in the house, and out back. / Lop away its extremities, they swell back fat.” // 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