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— Everything BLR. —
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 31 highlights
The art of memory, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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Creativity in Medicine: Navigating Uncertainty through Art and Literature
Explore how poetry, stories, and visual art can help us make sense of medicine’s complexities in this new online class.
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BLR Editor Danielle Ofri on “Why Medicine Needs Literary Magazines”
“Maybe a literary journal is not so much pages bound onto a spine, but rather a community of people—writers, readers, listeners, thinkers—who find solace in the comforts and confrontations of the written word.”
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 30 highlights
A chapter closes on BLR’s archival cover photos, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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Art and Medicine: Supporting Compassion Through Creativity
Enjoy cocktails, conversation, and community, while supporting BLR’s Art in Medicine program.
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 29 highlights
Reflections on the cost of war, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 28 highlights
A literary trip across the world, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 27 highlights
An exploration of our environment’s fragile nature, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 26 highlights
The circus comes to Bellevue, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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— See what’s new with us at BLR. —
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Angela Tang-Tan Wins Pushcart Prize for “Two Thoracotomies”
BLR is thrilled to announce that “Two Thoracotomies” by Angela Tang-Tan has won a Pushcart Prize.
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BLR Spring Reading with Authors from Issue 50
Join us on May 28 to celebrate the launch of Issue 50. We’ll hear from the issue’s authors live as they share their stories, essays, and poems.
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Announcing the BLR Book Club pick
We’re excited to announce our first pick for the BLR Book Club: Fire Exit, a novel by Morgan Talty. Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, The New Yorker, ELLE, NPR, and Harper’s Bazaar, Fire Exit is available on BLR’s Bookshop page, where a portion of every purchase goes to support community-building and…
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Announcing the 2027 BLR Literary Prizes Judges
Meet our 2027 BLR Literary Prize judges: Natalie Diaz, Daniel Mason, and Meghan O’Rourke. Submit poetry, fiction and nonfiction from March 1 to July 1, 2026.
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Writing the Body: Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare
Writing the Body, part of BLR’s Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare series, brings together four best-selling authors whose work confronts illness as it is lived in the body.
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BLR & Writers Read Present Body Language: True Stories of Illness, Recovery, and Discovery
Watch “Body Language: True Stories of Illness, Recovery, and Discovery” hosted by City Winery, Writers Read & Bellevue Literary Review.
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2025 Pushcart Prize Nominees
BLR is delighted to announce our 2025 Pushcart Prize Nominees.
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Announcing the 2026 BLR Prizewinners
Meet the Winners and Honorable Mentions of the 2026 BLR Literary Prizes.
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Be part of the “Narrative Arc”: Tell us about your favorite BLR poem, story, or essay
One of the ways we’ll be celebrating BLR’s 25th anniversary is with a new Narrative Arc event… which means another opportunity to share your voice with our community!
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Fall Reading: Animalia LIVE!
Watch the launch celebration of BLR’s special issue, “Animalia,” featuring writing that explores how health and healing both transcend and interconnect species, and what this can teach us about being human.
— Come join us, online, or in person. —
UPCOMING EVENTS
WATCH OUR PAST EVENTS
BLR Spring Reading 2026
BLR‘s annual spring reading features stunning poems, stories, and essays, including the winners of the 2026 BLR Literary Prizes. Hear from the issue’s contributors live as they read from their work. Hosted by BLR editors Saleem Hue Penny and Danielle Ofri
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Mapping the Mind
Mapping the Mind — part of BLR’s Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare series — is a dynamic conversation about writing the inner life. With Susannah Cahalan, Damon Tweedy, Sarah LaBrie, and Danielle Ofri
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Writing the Body
Writing the Body — part of BLR’s Conversations on Creative Writing in Healthcare series — brings together four best-selling authors whose work confronts illness as it is lived in the body. With Porochista Khakpour, Meghan O’Rourke, Rebekah Taussig, and Danielle Ofri
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BLR Fall Reading: Animalia
Watch writers and poets read their works from BLR‘s Issue 49, ‘Animalia,’ as part of BLR‘s live, online fall reading.
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BLR Book Salon with Anne Fadiman
Watch our exclusive BLR Book Salon with renowned writer Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.
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BLR SPRING READING 2025: WINNING WORDS
Watch a celebration of BLR‘s 48th issue and the winners of the 2025 BLR literary prizes. Featuring exciting new works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, plus interviews with our prizewinners.
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BLR BookTalk with Venita Blackburn
Watch acclaimed writer Venita Blackburn and BLR editor Suzanne McConnell’s conversation on Venita’s award-winning debut novel, Dead in Long Beach, California.
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BLR Writing Webinar: The Book Doctors Are In!
Watch medical writers Danielle Ofri, Damon Tweedy, Esther Choo, and Perri Klass discuss writing, careers, and ethical dilemmas as part of our workshop series.
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Narrative Arc: The Journey from Writer to Reader
Watch 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.
— Read interviews with BLR authors, editors, readers, and more. —
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Interview: Laura E. Garrard
“I found capturing moments through poetry, rather than summarizing the entire cancer experience, to be therapeutic rather than draining.”
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Interview: Lara Palmqvist
“The very idea that no story is final—be it the story of one’s own self, or the story of a nation—is ultimately something in which I find great hope.”
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Interview: Sabah Parsa
“Humor is the easiest for me to write in any piece, fiction or nonfiction.”
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Interview: Jack Coulehan
“Clinical care provides the subject matter for many of my poems, and some of the themes I explore in them…have driven a process of self-discovery that I think has made me a better doctor.”
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Interview: Meredith Talusan
“Fiction allows me to further portray realities from perspectives outside the majority, not just at the level of my lived experience but in terms of a broad range of possible trans, BIPOC, immigrant, and disabled experiences.”
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Interview: Manini Nayar
“I rarely know how a story ends until I get there. A story has its own life, and I am immersed in it and on the margins at the same time, both participant and recorder.”
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20th Anniversary Editorial Roundtable
In honor of BLR’s 20th anniversary, we’ve invited editors past and present to offer reflections on the BLR’s founding and its evolution over two decades of publishing.
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Interview: Julia Levine
“I have loved the natural world since I was a small child and it is my inability to see it accurately that pains me.”
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Interview: Nina Adel
“Almost all of my work takes place in the realm of the hybrid… I myself am just a regular person and artist who finds rules very difficult to adhere to.”
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Interview: Yalitza Ferreras
English has now become my primary language, although I experience it as a syllabic language, which I attribute to my brain being wired for Spanish.
— A new set of great reads with each click. Refresh for more. —
- fiction
- nonfiction
- poetry
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Responsibility
by Alok A. Khorana. “Vivek prided himself on bringing order to chaos. Lowly intern that he was, Vivek was the face of Ward 10.”
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What Is Buried Beneath
by Kati Eisenhuth. “…I stand in the OR at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, after another IED explosion. Two patients are laid out on surgical tables, each with a wound that gapes and gray skin tattooed by shrapnel.”
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Examining Rooms
by Midge Raymond. “These future doctors need to make a personal connection, to take the time to discuss next steps, to listen . . . Expressing the symptoms of pain is one thing—judging people on their performances is another.”
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In Other Hemispheres
by Pamela Ryder. “The room was dark, the father says. Then darker. It happened so quickly, I couldn’t call out. I thought I smelled grain—wheat or oats—what horses eat. A clean, sweet smell.”
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In Lieu of a Better Plan
by Elizabeth Downs. “One otherwise pleasant evening at the asylum, I—a known murderess and recently declared Vice President of Ward G—escape through a partially opened, third-story window.”
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A Vehicular Situation
by Maija Stromberg. “’Well, here’s the good Dr. Kaspar stuck out in a field in the middle of nowhere,’ LeeAnn said.”
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A Big Empty
by Rhonda Browning White. “We hadn’t talked since we left our West Virginia homeplace over two hours ago, both of us teary-eyed…”
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Reflexes
by Adriana Golden. “…what started as an alibi could be a salvation. Yesterday, I flushed the rest of the pills down the toilet, all at once. They flocked out of sight like a swarm of tiny pink beetles.”
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Sloth, That Wicked Siren
by Christopher Notarnicola. “Why he stopped showering, no one could say for sure, though everyone had their guesses.”
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Recoil
by Trenton Streeting. “After my father’s disk sander had whirred to halt, he turned to me and gestured majestically. ‘Matthew, the work is always the best pay.'”
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The Night of the Hurricane
“Hurricanes are not a common occurrence in New York City, but on October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall with extraordinary force.”
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Snapshots of Bellevue
by Dewitt Stetten, Jr. “On the east side of First Avenue, between 26th and 31st Streets in Manhattan, stood the ancient brick pile that was Bellevue Hospital.”
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The Next Bullet
by Jeremy Griffin. “Despite my respect for my students, I was afraid of them. Afraid of the way they watched me as I delivered a lecture, afraid of whispers, silences.”
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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.”
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Conduit
by River Adams. “This is a temple for them, I thought. This is where the gods will be merciful or not. And I speak for the gods.”
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On Not Seeing Whales
by Nikki Schulak. “My mother wanted to see a whale before she died. In a boat off Montauk, Long Island, we puked over the side railings for the entire four-hour tour. No whales.”
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Iambic Pentameter and the Meter of War
by Diane Cameron. “In the 1940’s, a young Marine returns from China to a small Pennsylvania town. One year later finds the body of the mother-in-law sprawled on the kitchen floor and the body of the wife in the living room, both perforated with bullets.”
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Two Thoracotomies
by Angela Tang-Tan. “The first time I witness a thorax opened, it is on a twenty-five-gram mouse. Heavier than most because she is gravid. The second time, it’s on a thirty-year-old man.”
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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.”
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Okahandja Lessons
by Emily Rapp. “Welcome to Namibia! The battered wooden sign stood at the edge of a highway that was strewn with piles of twisted, smoking metal.”
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Chronic Care: “Broken Leg” by Keith Carter, Photograph (Toned Gelatin Silver Print 1998)
by Laurie Clements Lambeth. “The girl in black dress and tights stands behind the fawn, / hands clasped, their white blur forming almost / a heart.”
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Hemiplegia
by Ona Gritz. “Left, my bright half, gets all of it… / soft sharp prickly wet lined. / But press your head against my right shoulder, / I sense weight but no warmth.”
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Monodrama
by Rachel Hadas. “The asymmetrically lurching gait, / the austere paradox as of one hand clapping: / a unilateral dialogue.”
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After Top Surgery
by Birch Rosen. “You do not have to stagger around the house, / unaided and weak, / as the meds wear off or kick in.”
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Distribution
by Jenny Qi. “Scatter my ashes in the ocean, / my father instructed…”
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Breaking the Fever
by Robert Carr. “The tender of your reflection / inverted in chrome / as a kettle boils…”
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Duende
by Elizabeth J. Coleman. “If I were a musical instrument, I’d be / a guitar, or violin, one that cries out, / the way the clarinet belted out / Smile When Your Heart is Breaking…”
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In the British Library Repository
by Katie Chaple. “The other man holds the letters / to his nose, inhaling deeply. / One letter after another he lifts and smells, / making two piles.”
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My Friend in Flapping Stages Tries to Take Flight
by Rochelle Robinson-Dukes. “April is my favorite month. / Its stormy flowers / and puddled rainbows are captivating / as is the lightning / that breaks cool spring nights / like a child’s scribble.”
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A THREAD OF SUNLIGHT ON EURYDICE’S HEM
by Eric Pankey. “Call it an exercise in restraint / The angle of ascent is sharp / Like the sloped ceiling…”
This week's featured issue—part of our 25th anniversary lookback—focuses on the art of memory, with stories, essays & poems that dive into this timeless theme. Read three issue highlights, with more to explore in our weekly blog post: https://blreview.org/issue-highlights/issue-31-highlights
4Though we're not ready to let summer go just yet, we are looking ahead to September � and the incredible slate of creative & community-focused events BLR has coming up. We hope you'll be inspired to join us! Learn more: https://blreview.org/blog/#events
3This week's featured issue—part of our 25th anniversary lookback—closes a chapter on BLR's archival cover photos, plus includes a tribute to Oliver Sacks, noted author, physician, and longtime BLR friend. Read issue highlights, plus more: https://blreview.org/issue-highlights/issue-30-highlights/
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Day 2 of #thesealeychallenge • Our featured poet is Jayne Marek, whose work appeared in Bellevue Literary Review (@BLReview), Issue 49. For the whole month of August, we'd like to put a spotlight on individual poets as well as some of our favourite lit mags.