Our History
3 doctors, 2 poets and 1 fiction writer
While the daily dramas of pneumonias, heart attacks, and cancers played out in real time down the hall of the Bellevue Hospital, the six of us in the conference room were discussing how these human stories might inspire a literary journal. We knew that a medical center could also be a natural locus of creativity. Hospitals are places where the human spirit is often at its most vulnerable. If we haven’t experienced illness ourselves, we have cared for sick children or ailing parents, or we’ve lived in fear of illness, or in denial of illness, or have obsessed over illness. Or we’ve nervously eyed the sinews of our bodies and minds as the calendar plugs relentlessly forward. It is within these planes of vulnerability that literature and the arts can have the most resonance.A New Look
In an homage to our founding inspiration, BLR featured archival photos of Bellevue Hospital and its community on its covers, a stunning visual documentary of the oldest public hospital in the U.S.
In an homage to our founding inspiration, BLR featured archival photos of Bellevue Hospital and its community on its covers, a stunning visual documentary of the oldest public hospital in the U.S.In 2018, BLR underwent a complete redesign through a remarkable collaboration with students at the Parsons School of Design, to create a fresh, modern look. The high-quality literature between the covers did not change, of course, but this appealing new design—which features the work of contemporary visual artists on our cover—helps integrate BLR into the larger world of arts and letters.
In 2018, We Believe in our Writers
Since the journal’s debut in 2001, BLR has published work by such luminaries as Amy Hempel, Rick Moody, Ha Jin, Edward Hirsch, Naomi Shihab Nye, Cornelius Eady, Sharon Olds, Paul Harding, Abraham Verghese, and others, while also becoming a home for emerging authors, some of whom count the BLR as their first publication. We’ve published early work by Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams; The Recovering), who won BLR’s Goldenberg Prize for Fiction; Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You; Little Fires Everywhere), whose BLR story “Girls, At Play” won a Pushcart Prize; and Kali Fajardo-Anstine, whose debut story collection, Sabrina and Corina—containing her BLR story, “Remedies”—was published to great acclaim. BLR is committed to bringing new voices to the table and expanding the literary ecosystem to include new audiences.
Short stories, poems, and essays first published in BLR have been reprinted in various prize anthologies, including The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Short Stories, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and others. Many more have been listed as notable honorees.
BLR hosts public readings as well as a variety of events at the intersection of literature, arts, health, illness and healing.
Praise & Recognition
“After reading it cover to cover, I came away walloped by the breadth and depth of the pain it highlights.”
“No human thing is more universal than illness, in all its permutations, and no literary publication holds more credibility on the subject than the Bellevue Literary Review.”
“A kaleidoscope of creativity. . . The selections are unsentimental and often unpredictable.”
“BLR's contents are at once practically instructive, and yet intangibly inspiring and utterly gripping. I can’t imagine my work as a writer, or a doctor, without it.”
“What is most impressive about the BLR, though, is how the editors can stretch their own boundaries.”
“The editors have produced a journal of uncommon literary quality.”
“Ask any healthcare worker, ask any patient who has come back from illness and fear, and you will hear stories that might change your life. That's what BLR offers.”