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

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— Everything BLR

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— Read interviews with BLR authors, editors, readers, and more —

— A new set of great reads with each click —

  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • Home Depot

    Home Depot

    by Robert Oldshue. “You know how it is. You think you’re married, you’re married to Albie forty-two, what is it, forty-three years, so at least you know Albie. Right?” // continue reading

  • Stray Gods

    Stray Gods

    by Shastri Akella. “When they play chase after, they aren’t Madhu and Boy. They’re the mythic boy gods, Krishna and Balarama, and Ajay, one of the many demons that the brothers chase and vanquish.” // continue reading

  • Numbers

    Numbers

    by Marcia Calhoun Forecki. “Even numbers are smooth and sweet, and can all be divided by two, which is the most perfect number of all because two means love: husband and wife, mother and child, man and dog. That should… // continue reading

  • Displacement: Illness & Health

    Displacement: Illness & Health

    by Barron Lerner. “To be ill is to be displaced—displaced from health, displaced from one’s former self, displaced from the community of the well.” // continue reading

  • A Staircase in the Fog

    A Staircase in the Fog

    by Robin Fast. “Beneath this rag-and-bone sky, the only shadow cast is memory. It was wintertime thirty-five years ago when I learned that family afflictions, like weather, come at you from beyond.” // continue reading

  • At the Mercy Meal

    At the Mercy Meal

    by Lindsay Starck. “If this scene—these baskets of bread, this mediocre rice, that parking lot awash with light—is familiar to me from all the other funerals we’ve attended here, how much more familiar is it to him? He drags his… // continue reading

  • Ear Examined

    Ear Examined

    by Cortney Davis. “A trickster, the ear. Making us believe / what eyes deny or hearts might doubt,” // continue reading

  • School Shooting

    School Shooting

    by Adam Scheffler. “After today’s rain / all that’s left / of the planets / green and pink / they’d chalked / on the sidewalk…” // continue reading

  • Biding

    Biding

    by June Rowe. “Named Inky by his captors, with appealing / comparisons to human traits, feedings / timed to please the children’s flattened / faces squished against the glass….” // 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