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— Everything BLR —
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BLR 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. // continue reading
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 18 highlights
The stories that stay with us, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year. // continue reading
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BLR Book Club | “Fire Exit” Week 5
Every week, we will be discussing a section of FIRE EXIT, the first pick of BLR’s Book Club. This week, history, illness, and identity weave their way through the story. // continue reading
— See what’s new with us at BLR —
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BLR Spring Reading with Authors from Issue 50
Join us on May 28 to celebrate the launch of Issue 50. We’ll hear from the issue’s authors live as they share their stories, essays, and poems. // continue reading
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Announcing the BLR Book Club pick
We’re excited to announce our first pick for the BLR Book Club: Fire Exit, a novel by Morgan Talty. Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, The New Yorker, ELLE, NPR, and Harper’s… // continue reading
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Announcing the 2027 BLR Literary Prizes Judges
Meet our 2027 BLR Literary Prize judges: Natalie Diaz, Daniel Mason, and Meghan O’Rourke. Submit poetry, fiction and nonfiction from March 1 to July 1, 2026. // continue reading
— Come join us, online, or in person —
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BLR Spring Reading with Authors from Issue 50
Join us on May 28 to celebrate the launch of Issue 50. We’ll hear from the issue’s authors live as they share their stories, essays, and poems. // continue reading
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Writing the Body: Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare
Writing the Body, part of BLR’s Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare series, brings together four best-selling authors whose work confronts illness as it is lived in the body. // continue reading
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BLR & Writers Read Present Body Language: True Stories of Illness, Recovery, and Discovery
City Winery, Writers Read & Bellevue Literary Review present Body Language: True Stories of Illness, Recovery, and Discovery live on April 12 at 1:00 PM. // continue reading
— Read interviews with BLR authors, editors, readers, and more —
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Interview: Lara Palmqvist
“The very idea that no story is final—be it the story of one’s own self, or the story of a nation—is ultimately something in which I find great hope.” // continue reading
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Interview: Sabah Parsa
“Humor is the easiest for me to write in any piece, fiction or nonfiction.” // continue reading
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Interview: Jack Coulehan
“Clinical care provides the subject matter for many of my poems, and some of the themes I explore in them…have driven a process of self-discovery that I think has made me a better doctor.” // continue reading
— A new set of great reads with each click —
- fiction
- nonfiction
- poetry
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The Wedding Photographer’s Assistant
“Dina,” she said, “you’re the least romantic person I know. For you to be a wedding photographer is too hilarious to pass up.” // continue reading
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The Room of Small Gods
They have carried his bed downstairs to the study where he can see the garden as he dies, with you, his collection of small gods, around him. // continue reading
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Hallandale Beach, 1987
It is not a miracle of faith, but a miracle of perseverance that delivers them both to high ground, the boy wincing under her bruising grip, protesting, I was joking, I could stand all the time, and the Bubbe, her… // continue reading
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Snapshots of Bellevue
When sick New Yorkers failed to find a place in private institutions like New York Hospital, they turned to public hospitals like Bellevue. // continue reading
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Distance
The ward doctor rang me late in the night to say that the Judge had been admitted with COVID-19 and was not doing well. He wasn’t deemed fit for ICU because of his age and his prior illness, the blood… // continue reading
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The Color of Sound
by Judy Rowley. “Almost every night throughout my childhood I prayed that a miracle would occur, that I would be able to hear perfectly one day.” // continue reading
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The Rice-Eating Ceremony
Nine months into my life, I am asked to eat on command / These tiny bursts of cylindrical snow that will reappear / Again and again // continue reading
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Patient Belongings
i Belongings: The short-sleeved blouse, its paisley rayon desperate to breathe light in your form; the comb that hungers for the pull of your hair; the wristwatch, clicking in stir, // continue reading
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Glaucoma
What my eyes see reminds me of under-exposed / negatives from my bygone wet photography days, / days replete with eyes—the camera’s, the enlarger’s, mine— // 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
``With every issue, Bellevue Literary Review probes our understanding of the human body and mind in new ways. It is essential reading for anyone who deals with sickness and health, anyone interested in narrative medicine, anyone who simply needs a dose of deep grace and humanity.”
“The editors have produced a journal of uncommon literary quality.”
“I subscribe and receive literally hundreds of magazines every year. Of all those magazines, none stands out more than Bellevue Literary Review.”
“These two non-fiction pieces in BLR are powerful, honest, and heartrending. They lifted me up because of the truths released onto the pages. Both deal with problems our family is suffering through, so on a personal level, the authors are helping me grapple.”
“BLR's contents are at once practically instructive, and yet intangibly inspiring and utterly gripping. I can’t imagine my work as a writer, or a doctor, without it.”
“After reading it cover to cover, I came away walloped by the breadth and depth of the pain it highlights.”
“No human thing is more universal than illness, in all its permutations, and no literary publication holds more credibility on the subject than Bellevue Literary Review.”
“A kaleidoscope of creativity. . . The selections are unsentimental and often unpredictable.”
“What is most impressive about BLR, though, is how the editors can stretch their own boundaries.”
“Ask any healthcare worker, ask any patient who has come back from illness and fear, and you will hear stories that might change your life. That's what BLR offers.”
“BLR is loyal to its theme but never constrained by it, uncovering boundless tonal and narrative possibilities as it contemplates the body as a physical entity, probes the manifestation of mental illness, or reckons with how the racialized and gendered body is perceived.”
“BLR is open to many modes and styles of work; it has no house style except humanity (though excellent editing doesn't hurt either).”





















