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

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— Everything 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
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    by Galen Schram. “You notice the weathered scar first, the wrinkled tilde pinching brown to pink skin where her pierced nipple once shocked her late husband.” // 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

  • The Tribulations of Uncle Ned

    The Tribulations of Uncle Ned

    by Stephanie Wrobel. “I knew years ago that the paternal gene was missing. I should not, would not, be relied on by other humans, especially small, defenseless ones.” // continue reading

  • 71 Grams

    71 Grams

    by Nicki Porter. “At home, you unload each item with a quiet smile and feel a pinching like a tiny crab below your belly. You imagine a poppy seed nestling in, burrowing, seeking shelter within you, preparing to stay.” // continue reading

  • Motherhood Requiem

    Motherhood Requiem

    by Nadia Ghent. “One afternoon, after my mother had fallen ill for the fourth or fifth time, I pulled out all my eyelashes, one by one. I was thirteen. She had gone to the hospital in the middle of the… // continue reading

  • Two Thoracotomies 

    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.” // continue reading

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    by Rachael Trotter. “The air is iron-rich like good potting soil / here, where the sun won’t ever reach, only / the exam light beam boring down / on the life raft of a gurney, the patient / barely afloat… // continue reading

  • Ambiguous Loss

    Ambiguous Loss

    by Ceilidh Barlow Cash. “It feels like holding a bird in one hand / and a bowling ball in the other.” // 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

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