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

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— Everything BLR

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— A new set of great reads with each click —

  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • Rivers

    Rivers

    by Yalitza Ferreras. “Aunt #1’s plastic toilet lid shifts under Manolo’s weight as he balances his left ankle on his right knee, careful so his leg doesn’t slide off his sweatpants.” // continue reading

  • 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

  • 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

  • Visual Anguish and Looking at Art

    Visual Anguish and Looking at Art

    by Sheila Kohler. “I understand these were commercial jetliners, not ICBMs, that split the steel and glass of the World Trade Center. Someone, a person, had a long-standing vision, intentions, imagined the explosions and death that would follow.” // 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

  • In Between Time

    In Between Time

    by Eric Jones. “Pain made me a precocious student of time, each middle ear infection a new lesson on the uncatchable instant.” // continue reading

  • Without Fear of Being Burned

    Without Fear of Being Burned

    by Adam Possner. “I hear you just beyond reach / of the flickering light of / the TV, which you’ve kindled / as a kind of controlled burn…” // continue reading

  • The Speed of Mice

    The Speed of Mice

    by Hal Sirowitz. “When the Parkinson’s medication / wears down, I turn into Cinderella. / My means of transportation / slows down to the speed of / a pumpkin pulled by mice.” // continue reading

  • Art 

    Art 

    by Eric Nelson. “October, a woman and a boy, a tumor / overtaking his brain, draw pictures / in the waiting room.” // 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