A journal of humanity and human experience

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Join us on December 5th for  “Narrative Arc: The Journey from Writer to Reader,” celebrating the unique relationship between the writers who bring words to the page and the readers who receive them. (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

School Shooting

After today’s rain/
all that’s left/
of the planets/
green and pink

Dear Shooter,

Bloodstains left / on the sidewalk / Body bags, / Yellow tape, / Why don’t you think about the consequences / You’re going to have to face?

Bury the Lead

They say the sharks came early/
and stayed late, unwanted houseguests

The Family Farm

It didn’t feel wrong because I chose to do it. When I was home from university, I continued in this way, carrying a sharpened coal shovel and leather gloves, or my mother’s .22 Ruger handgun.

O To Be a Semiautomatic Weapon

Late June fields greening
under a mottled sky.
An oriole slashes orange
against a shingled Cape Cod.

il Faut

Now he stares at the bag of bulbs, the naked little bodies burgeoning, begging for life in the sweet dark ground. The ground that buries.

Telephone

These days I think of you/
on the yellow chaise/
with your Parkinson’s/ 
and hatred of telephones, 

Book Review: Anatomical Venus

As if turning a kaleidoscope on pain to better examine it, Bates-Hardy contends with pain’s irreducible and cyclical nature.

Danielle Ofri’s Picks

Editor-in-Chief I love perusing the “slush pile,” because you never know what might turn up.…

Praise & Recognition