A journal of humanity and human experience
Coming up next
Join BLR and The Paige Fraser Foundation at the historic New York Academy of Medicine September 18th as we bring our recently created film, Reading the Body: Poetry and Dance on Recovery, to a live audience.
This November, BLR takes to the stage at the legendary Thalia Theater at Symphony Space for a live storytelling event on the theme of “Taking Care,” in collaboration with The Nocturnists.
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 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
The rule of conduct for freshmen confronted by a homeroom teacher rarely varies. Shaniece chooses the most common move…
Something nobody warns you about, when you get very sick, is that you have to be polite. You have to be Emily f-ing Post every minute of the day,
Probes puncture my scalp, surveying my mind. Temporal lobe, occipital lobe, you name it; there’s a probe for the lobe.
Ingeborg Riedmaier reads “June Bugs,” a poem by Prartho Sereno
A decade after we burned through the mysteries / and you taught me cartography’s other dark /
arts, I dreamed of you coming for a garden tea…
We shared cigarettes and jokes / talked about anything except / what we’d seen, the baby we’d X-rayed, / his bruises…
All of the Peace Corps medics are male and white. The most retiring of these, Claude Renner, is the one unlucky enough to be nearest the entrance when the soldier bursts inside, carrying his unconscious son in his arms.
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.
You don’t know hunger. Not like we did. You don’t know hunger that surpasses pain. When your body is too weak to send distress signals. When your organs have shifted from fight to flight, to surrender. When you don’t even have energy to fuel the aching. I’ve been there.
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).”