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Applications are open for the new BLR Editorial Fellowship
BLR’s new Editorial Fellowship is a year-long mentorship program designed to introduce writers to editorial pathways and support literary engagement and citizenship. // continue reading
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 39 highlights
BLR’s first independently published issue, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year. // continue reading
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Call for Submissions: Theme Issue on Migrations
From September 1 to December 31, 2026, we are accepting submissions for a special theme issue on Migrations. // continue reading
— See what’s new with us at BLR —
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Applications are open for the new BLR Editorial Fellowship
BLR’s new Editorial Fellowship is a year-long mentorship program designed to introduce writers to editorial pathways and support literary engagement and citizenship. // continue reading
-

Call for Submissions: Theme Issue on Migrations
From September 1 to December 31, 2026, we are accepting submissions for a special theme issue on Migrations. // continue reading
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Coming soon! BLR’s 25th anniversary issue
Along with a stellar mix of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, the anniversary issue of BLR includes special features including an art insert and roundtable about writing and healing. // continue reading
— Come join us, online, or in person —
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Bellevue Literary Review: 2026 Fall Reading
Join us on October 22 to celebrate the launch of BLR’s special 25th anniversary issue; hear from the issue’s contributors live as they read from their work. // continue reading
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Creativity in Medicine: Navigating Uncertainty through Art and Literature
Explore how poetry, stories, and visual art can help us make sense of medicine’s complexities in this new online workshop. // continue reading
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Art and Medicine: Supporting Compassion Through Creativity
Enjoy cocktails, conversation, and community, while supporting BLR’s Art in Medicine program. // continue reading
— Read interviews with BLR authors, editors, readers, and more —
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Interview: Laura E. Garrard
“I found capturing moments through poetry, rather than summarizing the entire cancer experience, to be therapeutic rather than draining.” // continue reading
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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
— A new set of great reads with each click —
- fiction
- nonfiction
- poetry
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My Uncle Deserves Chekhov
by Robert Treu. “’Every family has one,’ my sister Joyce liked to say. ‘One crazy uncle or aunt they can’t hide or forget.’” // continue reading
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by Ellen Collins. “We have forgotten how to tie our shoes, how to button our sweaters, how to hold a fork. We have lost the ability to add a column of numbers, to trace a route on a map, to… // continue reading
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Shaking the Dead Geranium
by Harriet Rzetelny. “By age sixteen, he’d won a full scholarship to Emory College. By eighteen, he was convinced that my mother was sucking the life fluids out of his brain and went after her with a bread knife.” // continue reading
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Illness as Muse
by Rafael Campo. “It is not unusual, after I’ve given a poetry reading, for some impossibly young writer from the audience to remark over the post-literary pretzels and Diet Coke, “Wow, your stuff is really depressing.’’ // continue reading
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Cancer, So Far
by Elizabeth Crowell. “Last summer, the moths clung to the shingles of our house. They fluttered right past us, mottled wings snapping, through our open door.” // continue reading
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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
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Love On Death’s Doorstep
by Alice Wirth Gray. “Her lovely face captured the one / available male in the old folks’ home. / She’s found, at long last, Mr. Right, / absolutely faithful, endlessly attentive, / forgiving of all idiocy.” // continue reading
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Letter to a Dead Mother
by Martha Silano. “Thinking of you as I pick up flecks of oats from the kitchen floor, / put them back in the container. You know, the five-second rule.” // continue reading
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Clínica Hispana
by Hillary Kobernick. “I am reading Spanish posters / and wondering about stomach aches— / mine, mostly.” // 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).”






















