25 years of creative writing on health, illness, and healing

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— A new set of great reads with each click —

  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • Rivers

    Rivers

    by Yalitza Ferreras. “Aunt #1’s plastic toilet lid shifts under Manolo’s weight as he balances his left ankle on his right knee, careful so his leg doesn’t slide off his sweatpants.” // continue reading

  • If Brains Was Gas

    If Brains Was Gas

    by Abraham Verghese. “I turned thirteen that week. I assumed that it came with some new liberties, but no one had specifically said so, and I was too uncertain to ask. Still, the night after my birthday, Elmo and me… // continue reading

  • Your Quiet Affair

    Your Quiet Affair

    by Christine Caya. “Your affair with Connie Gervais starts the way you imagine most do.” // continue reading

  • Forty-One Months

    Forty-One Months

    by William McGrath. “Thato is a small sad boy who has come to stay at the safe home in Lesotho, up in the cloudvoid in the eastern mountains of Mokhotlong district. His mother is dead and his father is off… // continue reading

  • A Love Story All the Same

    A Love Story All the Same

    by Claire A. Berman. “…I understood that he’d been expressing his own insecurities, not mine. I entered new relationships full of trepidation. Symptoms and appearance were inextricably bound together in my mind, necessitating constant body vigilance to control them.” // continue reading

  • Quarantine  

    Quarantine  

    by Matthew Davis. “I knew plague existed in Mongolia, but I had always thought it stayed in smaller towns further west.” // continue reading

  • Ash

    Ash

    by Karin Gottshall. “The river has its own concerns. It loves / the human form the way fury / loves a stone.” // continue reading

  • The Rice-Eating Ceremony

    The Rice-Eating Ceremony

    by Sonia Sarkar. “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

  • Day 1,301

    Day 1,301

    by Judith Harris. “There will be a worse day. He will live / long enough to not recognize me at all, / and I sense it drawing nearer…” // 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