A journal of humanity and human experience

Coming up next

Contest and general submissions are OPEN. Submit to the 2026 BLR Literary Prizes by July 1, 2025.
Join us April 30th for our annual BLR Winning Words Spring Reading, featuring the prizewinners and honorable mentions of the 2025 BLR Literary Prizes. (Free, online)

As featured on NPR's Morning Edition

NPR’s Neda Ulaby reported on BLR‘s 20th Anniversary, featuring BLR Editor Danielle Ofri, along with author Celeste Ng. Long before Celeste Ng reached stratospheric popularity with Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere, she was an emerging author, whose story “Girls, at Play” appeared in BLR and then won a Pushcart Prize.

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.”

BLR Off the Page

DISCOVER MORE

if i die at thirty five

there will be/
no burial burn/
the body cancer/
cratered

Particle

like light is/
like my speckled skin: brim/
and brink. verge.

EVOCATION (STREETS)

I am surrounded by streets/ 
half dark, half lit, by high rises/
sheathed in metal and glass, 

Storm Chasers

During the week we have left in Hawaii, Liz occasionally mentions that maybe I should go back to the hospital to see my father, and I say no, and she says family is important, and then neither of us says anything for a while. My dad has managed to ruin the trip.

If Brains Was Gas

I turned thirteen that week. I assumed that it came with some new liberties, but no one had specifically said so, and I was too uncertain to ask. Still, the night after my birthday, Elmo and me made plans to go out.

We Are Only Human

My mother believed it was important for a child to witness healthy communication about difficult topics. My father allowed this as long as I remained quiet and didn’t interfere.

The Great Imitator

I am a disease. My very existence poisons my father’s life.

Book Review: Brainspotting

As he writes, neurologists were once caricatured as “introverted, analytical eggheads that combined the precision of mathematicians with the scrupulosity of bryologists and the sobriety of undertakers.” The precision, reach, and wry amusement of that sentence alone tells you that though this isn’t Sacks, we’re in capable hands.

Yellowthroat

Some of y’all pray to God/
I pray to the yellow warblers/
and their frail whistling 

Praise & Recognition