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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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Death Defiant Bomba or What To Wear When Your Boo Gets Cancer
by Lilliam Rivera. “You’ll wear five-inch black pumps because they make that annoying noise that alerts everyone everywhere in the whole wide world that you’re arriving.”
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Avtomat Kalashnikova
by Rachel Hall. “Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov wakes in gray light to the sounds of the injured soldiers in the cots beside him moaning, crying out.”
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Ghosts of Doubt
by Gregg Cusick. “He stands before the class, the lectern his wheelhouse, the teen- or twenty- something-aged students his sea, the sky in the back windows his horizon. The worn paperback before him lays open to a page. If he were to brush it to the floor, the spine would strike first and the leaves…
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Last Stop
by Daniel Pope. “Outside the train station a man lies on the concrete brick walkway, his head resting in a pool of blood. His skull is buzzed and the blood leaks brightly out of a wound above his left temple. Just beyond the pool is his camouflage-patterned cap.”
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Rocket
by Jason Baum. “He asks if he can put the radio to a country station…the guy is going into space for a year so I let him. Who knows what kind of reception he’ll be able to get up there.”
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Evacuation Instructions
by Elliott Hold. “With the fat stripped away, she is her essential self. They don’t tell you how beautiful people can be when they’re dying.”
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Commotio Cordis
by Pria Anand. “Lydia dreamt, too. She dreamt of Carnivale, of the motorcade, motorcycles without mufflers and pickup trucks hung with paper cutouts circling the island.”
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The Orchard
by Lauren Green. “When the bell finally rings, waste no time. Grab your Kipling from the cubby and head straight to the front of the carpool line.”
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Free Love
by Allegra Hyde. “At Free Oaks, I perched in the laps of transient poets and tugged at the robes of bilingual maharishi, collecting nuggets of enlightenment like stones.”
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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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The Color of Sound
by Judy Rowley. “Almost every night throughout my childhood I prayed that a miracle would occur, that I would be able to hear perfectly one day.”
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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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Cancer, So Far
by Elizabeth Crowell. “Last summer, the moths clung to the shingles of our house. They fluttered right past us, mottled wings snapping, through our open door.”
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I Must Have Been That Man
by Adina Talve-Goodman. “To the left of the scar, I could see the new heart beating beneath my skin. The new double pump song of perfection replacing the one wrong beat, a single ventricle, I’d had before.”
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The Father Shift
by Trish Travieso. “I was twenty-three years old the first time I saw my father wearing a dress.”
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Dark Valley
by Zoë Sprankle. “I’m too young now to know how soon imaginary play will decay and mature into rumors and cliques and senior boys with beards who look at me like I’m simultaneously a toddler and a toy.”
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The Wills of Twenty Strangers
by Anna Mirer. “It is eleven o’clock at night, and I am stomping around with half a skull in my hand.”
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The Storm Between Us
by Kelly Flanigan. “I walk into Scott’s kitchen, sweaty from basketball and needing something cold to drink, and there’s his mom in just her underwear…”
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Canine Cardiology
by Deborah Thompson. “Houdi pawed at the student’s thighs and, despite his heart condition, displayed one of his inopportune erections, which the vet student chose not to acknowledge.”
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Officium
by Siobhan McKenna. “’How do you do it? How do you watch people die day after day?’ He asked the question as we passed each other on the threshold of his wife’s room. He was leaving after having said all the goodbyes that could be spoken with words.”
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The Mountain and the Teaspoon
by Lindsay Stuart Hill. “She wondered what would happen / to her actual face. Would it fade away? Or would it / stay put, like a person you can never get rid of…”
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Autumn Dawn, After Fog
by Patty Crane. “the fields to silver, mown paths / like rivers of first-ice—every / blade of grass scattering light…”
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Dear Shooter,
by Rachel Ullah. “Bloodstains left / on the sidewalk / Body bags, / Yellow tape, / Why don’t you think about the consequences / You’re going to have to face?”
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Our Cat at the Winter Solstice
by Joan I. Siegel. “He does not wait for the sun’s return. Instead he makes a pillow of darkness to stretch inside this longest night…”
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Day 1,301
by Judith Harris. “There will be a worse day. He will live / long enough to not recognize me at all, / and I sense it drawing nearer…”
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The Old Man Washes His Boat, Ballycotton
by Elizabeth Biller Chapman. “The old man/ plies his trade, his wages earned: a clean boat. / Is labor prayer?”
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The Call
by Terry M. Dugan. “I could tell from his voice / something was horribly wrong. / I’m okay he said over and over / in a tone that told me he was anything but.”
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Plantation
by Kwame Dawes. “And, eventually, we remember only the deepest / gloom, waiting still for the sudden suspense / of illumination — the light, blinding…”
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Rabbit Walk
by Brett Warren. “All around me, trees and shrubs infringe / on gravestones, while lichens write their stories / over names and dates. Under the ground, / where once I imagined only the remains…”
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The Shed
by Elana Bell. “Each time something went missing— / the photo album of my first / year, postcard from a forgotten friend…”
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.