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— Everything BLR —
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 26 highlights
The circus comes to Bellevue, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year. // continue reading
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BLR Editor Danielle Ofri on “Why Medicine Needs Literary Magazines”
“Maybe a literary journal is not so much pages bound onto a spine, but rather a community of people—writers, readers, listeners, thinkers—who find solace in the comforts and confrontations of the written word.” // continue reading
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 25 highlights
Literature and the multicultural perspective, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year. // continue reading
— See what’s new with us at BLR —
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Angela Tang-Tan Wins Pushcart Prize for “Two Thoracotomies”
BLR is thrilled to announce that “Two Thoracotomies” by Angela Tang-Tan has won a Pushcart Prize. // continue reading
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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
— Come join us, online, or in person —
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Celebration of Poetry and Healing
BLR is thrilled to be part of the 2026 poetry series at Bryant Park’s Reading Room. All are welcome — mark your calendar for September 1! // 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 class. // continue reading
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BLR BookTalk with Author Morgan Talty
Join us on June 11 for a live conversation as we dive into Morgan’s book Fire Exit, which was the inaugural selection for BLR’s new Book Club. // 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
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Interview: Sabah Parsa
“Humor is the easiest for me to write in any piece, fiction or nonfiction.” // continue reading
— A new set of great reads with each click —
- fiction
- nonfiction
- poetry
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In Another Life
by Lara Palmqvist. “The two of them stand framed together in the fragile glass, she thin-faced with a worried mouth, he like a wisp of smoke with flint at its center, vulnerable but still volatile within.” // continue reading
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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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High Water Mark
by Suzanne McConnell. “I regard myself in the mirror he holds up. It is spring, but damp here in Venice. The necklace lies on my blue sweater like fire.” // continue reading
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Given
by Nancy Devine. “This must be the first harvest from our acreage: our young vineyard singing, the plastic, ribbed grow tubes that make little greenhouses for each of the young grape plants catching wind and, like a throat and its… // continue reading
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Remembering Appleman
by Scott Temple. “’If I can’t help your mother,’ Appleman said to me, ‘then I’ll help you build some armor against her rages.’” // continue reading
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Bloodlines
by Anne Rudig. “The blood I wished was mine almost killed Mindy. I began to wonder whether it wasn’t such a bad thing we weren’t related, but the thought felt so disloyal I dismissed it as soon as I could.” // continue reading
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Above the Angels
by Philip Levine. “A row of corrugated gray huts / hunkering down in the November rain. / Across the way the fire burns night and day / though unseen now in first light.” // continue reading
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Conversation with a Dead Poet
by Eleonora Luongo. “I kept them all. The poems, I mean. When I / tried to tell your mother, she’d leaned in, said,…” // continue reading
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The James Webb Telescope Detects a Heartbeat
by Terry Tierney. “They say the pulses come from a distant galaxy, / an infant cluster in the first moment of birth.” // 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).”






















