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
  • Atrophy

    Atrophy

    by Lauren Erin O’Brien. “Yarrow doesn’t say much aside from being strange but that’s less him and more his parents, if he even has those. He doesn’t seem like the type to come from a womb.” // continue reading

  • What Is Buried Beneath

    What Is Buried Beneath

    by Kati Eisenhuth. “…I stand in the OR at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, after another IED explosion. Two patients are laid out on surgical tables, each with a wound that gapes and gray skin tattooed by shrapnel.” // continue reading

  • Coulrophobia

    Coulrophobia

    by Jacob M. Appel. “My father fancied himself a shrewd landlord—he refused to rent to lawyers, the children of lawyers, even a college girl who “had law school written all over her”—but he probably bit off too much when he… // 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

  • Okahandja Lessons

    Okahandja Lessons

    by Emily Rapp. “Welcome to Namibia! The battered wooden sign stood at the edge of a highway that was strewn with piles of twisted, smoking metal.” // continue reading

  • The Color of Sound

    The Color of Sound

    by Judy Rowley. “Almost every night throughout my childhood I prayed that a miracle would occur, that I would be able to hear perfectly one day.” // continue reading

  • The Initiation

    The Initiation

    by Alicia Ostriker. “Boy, he said, you got to fill a graveyard / before you know this business / and you just did / row one, plot one.” // continue reading

  • Hemiplegia

    Hemiplegia

    by Ona Gritz. “Left, my bright half, gets all of it… / soft sharp prickly wet lined. / But press your head against my right shoulder, / I sense weight but no warmth.” // continue reading

  • A Spring Without Us

    A Spring Without Us

    by Talia Bloch. “The playground has been locked for months. / A swing coughs dryly in the shade.” // 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