A journal of humanity and human experience

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New Issue Alert!
You can now pre-order Issue 44, featuring the winners of the 2023 BLR Prizes and much more.
Winning Words: A Reading with the 2023 BLR Prize Winners
Join us on Wednesday, April 19 (online)

As featured on NPR's Morning Edition

NPR’s Neda Ulaby reported on BLR‘s 20th Anniversary, featuring BLR Editor Danielle Ofri, along with author Celeste Ng. Long before Celeste Ng reached stratospheric popularity with Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere, she was a an emerging author, whose story “Girls, at Play” appeared in BLR and then won a Pushcart Prize.

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.”

BLR Off the Page

DISCOVER MORE

Off The Page: Cesarean Birth

Nksoi Nkululeko reads “Cesarean Birth,” a poem by Viola Lee

Distance

Mallika Sekhar April 2020 The ward doctor rang me late in the night to say…

Book Review: Poets on Prozac

For every Sylvia Plath there was a William Carlos Williams; one was well-known for writing through the lens of her afflictions while the other’s legacy remains his imagery and not the psychotherapy he sought out late in life.

Recoil 

After my father’s disk sander had whirred to halt, he turned to me and gestured majestically. “Matthew, the work is always the best pay.”

Motherhood Requiem

Nadia Ghent One afternoon, after my mother had fallen ill for the fourth or fifth…

Canine Cardiology

Houdi pawed at the student’s thighs and, despite his heart condition, displayed one of his inopportune erections, which the vet student chose not to acknowledge.

Cousin Esther Goes to Chicago 

All that time I’ve been working here, mopping the floors, emptying the trash, washing down rooms, and watching the wet-behind-the-ears young pup doctors learn their business.

il Faut

Now he stares at the bag of bulbs, the naked little bodies burgeoning, begging for life in the sweet dark ground. The ground that buries.

Tethered to the Body

There is only illness, and there is no way to make that sexy. After several years as a medical device wearer, I know.

Praise & Recognition