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

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— Everything BLR

— See what’s new with us at 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
  • Leviathan

    Leviathan

    by Jennifer Lee. “At what point, I wonder, does a person say enough is enough? I can’t go through with this; I didn’t pick the ending I’ve been given. I would dearly love to keep the next few years of… // continue reading

  • White Space

    White Space

    by Amanda McComick. “She had an endless appetite for information, and even though it was just a million different angles on the same collapsing towers, she filed away the details, she hungered for information.” // 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

  • Remembering Appleman

    Remembering Appleman

    by Scott Temple. “’If I can’t help your mother,’ Appleman said to me, ‘then I’ll help you build some armor against her rages.’”  // continue reading

  • Vital Signs

    Vital Signs

    by Rachel Mann. “One thing you will feel, as fiercely as the contractions squeezing you now like a juicer, is that it will always be a different kind of loss for him.” // continue reading

  • Solitude

    Solitude

    by Joan Kip. “I am back with the ‘who’ of me, the self I left behind through the seasons of my years. The ultimate prize is this reconciliation with the original, unvarnished self.” // continue reading

  • Carousel

    Carousel

    by Matthew Ladd. “The Pacific Ocean, to a child of three, / sounds like a push-broom in his mother’s kitchen. / Life took us elsewhere: like other boys, I learned…” // continue reading

  • Migrations

    Migrations

    by Ines P. Rivera Prosdocimi. “San Nicolas fluctuated between mentor, master. / The more I travelled the stairs, he levitated. The more / I slid my finger along his goldstone frame, he’d say, /‘Ciónnn.” // continue reading

  • Hinges

    Hinges

    by Melissa Stein. “You opened this door. Forced it back /  on its hinges, drove in the thin wedge, saying / ‘I may need to enter at a moment’s notice…'” // 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