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

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— A new set of great reads with each click —

  • fiction
  • nonfiction
  • poetry
  • Rocket

    Rocket

    by Jason Baum. “He asks if he can put the radio to a country station…the guy is going into space for a year so I let him. Who knows what kind of reception he’ll be able to get up there.” // continue reading

  • Bus

    Bus

    by Joan Leegant. “I’d sit there and look at the glossy paper in my lap, at the strings of black letters arranged in neat columns on the shiny vellum, my twenty-four-year-old son next to me in his infusion chair joking… // continue reading

  • Periscope

    Periscope

    by Anne Elliott. “Caroline listened to the bellows under her bed, drawing and blowing air. The room asserted itself, always, its rhythmic hiss and pop of machinery, the anti-lullaby of metal cocoons, rows of them, each containing a complicated person.” // 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

  • Close to the Bones

    Close to the Bones

    by Amy Nolan. “It was a relentlessly sunny day in July, a week after my fifteenth birthday, when I was admitted to the hospital. I remember staring out the side window of the Chevette’s back seat, trying to follow the… // continue reading

  • The Absolute Worst Thing  

    The Absolute Worst Thing  

    by Seth Carey. “When they suggested one more blood test, since ‘maybe you’re lucky and you just have AIDS,’ I knew that the absolute worst thing was for real.” // 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