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
  • Sloth, That Wicked Siren

    Sloth, That Wicked Siren

    by Christopher Notarnicola. “Why he stopped showering, no one could say for sure, though everyone had their guesses.” // continue reading

  • Shaking the Dead Geranium 

    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

  • Failed Treaties

    Failed Treaties

    by Sahar Mustafah. “Danny used to open the door and let me into his apartment downstairs at seven a.m. every Saturday. My mother would already be up, stooped over the kitchen table in our upstairs apartment, wearing her pale-blue nightdress, spreading tangy lebanah… // continue reading

  • Dark Valley

    Dark Valley

    by Zoë Sprankle. “I’m too young now to know how soon imaginary play will decay and mature into rumors and cliques and senior boys with beards who look at me like I’m simultaneously a toddler and a toy.” // 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

  • Snapshots of Bellevue

    Snapshots of Bellevue

    by Dewitt Stetten, Jr. “On the east side of First Avenue, between 26th and 31st Streets in Manhattan, stood the ancient brick pile that was Bellevue Hospital.” // continue reading

  • The Oncologist

    The Oncologist

    by Carole Stone. “Do you have an appetite? / No. / Are you anxious? Yes. / Irritable? Yes. / I hand in the questionnaire.” // continue reading

  • Lost Time (1997)

    Lost Time (1997)

    by Jay Kidd. “It was on an airplane that I let my / mother read the first paragraph of / Swann’s Way, my travel reading.” // continue reading

  • The Sleepy Beauties of Sound

    The Sleepy Beauties of Sound

    by Jane Wayne. “For now it’s guesswork: a territory / full of unmapped regions, / where paths revert to weeds, and one only advances / by descent – so many steps / from the imagined to the lived.” // 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