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

  • Issue 50
  • Issue 49
  • Issue 48

  • all
  • news
  • events
  • interviews

— Everything BLR —

— See what’s new with us at BLR —

— Come join us, online, or in person —

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

— A new set of great reads with each click —

  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • My Uncle Deserves Chekhov 

    My Uncle Deserves Chekhov 

    by Robert Treu. “’Every family has one,’ my sister Joyce liked to say. ‘One crazy uncle or aunt they can’t hide or forget.’” // continue reading

  • Untitled post 19287

    by Ellen Collins. “We have forgotten how to tie our shoes, how to button our sweaters, how to hold a fork. We have lost the ability to add a column of numbers, to trace a route on a map, to… // 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

  • Illness as Muse

    Illness as Muse

    by Rafael Campo. “It is not unusual, after I’ve given a poetry reading, for some impossibly young writer from the audience to remark over the post-literary pretzels and Diet Coke, “Wow, your stuff is really depressing.’’ // continue reading

  • Cancer, So Far

    Cancer, So Far

    by Elizabeth Crowell. “Last summer, the moths clung to the shingles of our house. They fluttered right past us, mottled wings snapping, through our open door.” // continue reading

  • In Between Time

    In Between Time

    by Eric Jones. “Pain made me a precocious student of time, each middle ear infection a new lesson on the uncatchable instant.” // continue reading

  • Love On Death’s Doorstep

    Love On Death’s Doorstep

    by Alice Wirth Gray. “Her lovely face captured the one / available male in the old folks’ home. / She’s found, at long last, Mr. Right, / absolutely faithful, endlessly attentive, / forgiving of all idiocy.” // continue reading

  • Letter to a Dead Mother

    Letter to a Dead Mother

    by Martha Silano. “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.” // continue reading

  • Clínica Hispana

    Clínica Hispana

    by Hillary Kobernick. “I am reading Spanish posters / and wondering about stomach aches— / mine, mostly.” // 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