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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 42 highlights
Cover art with a fun fact, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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Applications are open for the new BLR Editorial Fellowship
BLR’s new Editorial Fellowship is a year-long mentorship program designed to introduce writers to editorial pathways and support literary engagement and citizenship.
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BLR 25th Anniversary Celebration
Celebrate BLR’s 25th Anniversary with us on November 12 at The Century Club in New York City!
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 41 highlights
When BLR reached a milestone, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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The One-Breath Poem: A BLR Haiku Workshop
In this special BLR workshop, explore haiku as a practice of presence and attention.
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 40 highlights
Our earliest Covid-inspired writing, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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Bellevue Literary Review: 2026 Fall Reading
Join us on October 22 to celebrate the launch of BLR’s special 25th anniversary issue; hear from the issue’s contributors live as they read from their work.
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 39 highlights
BLR’s first independently published issue, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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Call for Submissions: Theme Issue on Migrations
From September 1 to December 31, 2026, we are accepting submissions for a special theme issue on Migrations.
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— See what’s new with us at BLR. —
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Applications are open for the new BLR Editorial Fellowship
BLR’s new Editorial Fellowship is a year-long mentorship program designed to introduce writers to editorial pathways and support literary engagement and citizenship.
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Call for Submissions: Theme Issue on Migrations
From September 1 to December 31, 2026, we are accepting submissions for a special theme issue on Migrations.
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Coming soon! BLR’s 25th anniversary issue
Along with a stellar mix of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, the anniversary issue of BLR includes special features including an art insert and roundtable about writing and healing.
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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.
— 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: Tammy Greenwood
“Nature has a way of reminding us we don’t have to try so hard; sometimes just existing is magnificent.”
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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.”
— A new set of great reads with each click. Refresh for more. —
- fiction
- nonfiction
- poetry
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Vultur Gryphus
by Daniel Seifert. “Luis unscrews a small bottle of puro and daubs Tio’s smiling mouth. In the still air, the pure alcohol makes Luis’s eyes water. Further down, he hears the deep-throated cough of a detonation. He heads toward it.”
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Spectrum
by Ian MacLean. “In sleeping, Joseph’s eyes moved under their lids, as if he still searched the ward and the land out the window for phenomena. Planets churned in arcs and stars collapsed somewhere in that blackness, and he searched for this too, his eye movements aligning with the movement of heavenly bodies.”
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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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Housekeeping
by Ryan Pollard. “I was coasting along like every other rudderless late adolescent…My particular drift happened to be tied to a disability I had yet to face, and it would be a while still before I finally found my footing.”
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Finding Honey
by Daniel Reiss. “To find honey, I must first find a bee. It’s not that hard to find a bee. I just wander the woods till I find a source of water. If I come to a creek or a river, I’ll nearly always find bees…”
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Convergence
by Kathryn Kulpa. “It’s going to happen today. He can feel it waiting to happen, because he’s wanted to know for so long. There are people who live to satisfy curiosity, and Derrick is one of them.”
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Numbers
by Marcia Calhoun Forecki. “Even numbers are smooth and sweet, and can all be divided by two, which is the most perfect number of all because two means love: husband and wife, mother and child, man and dog. That should be obvious to anyone.”
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The Gun Goes Off and At First No One Knows Who’s Been Hit
by Ian Baaske. “Someone’s died. I know this because of vague posts on Facebook. It can’t be anyone I know very well, or I’d have texts or phone calls or, well, something.”
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The Third Story
by Rebecca Wurtz. “Paul once thought that the talent and ambition that had propelled him into graduate school as the first Negro PhD in pharmacology would keep propelling him, perhaps into a chairmanship at a prestigious Negro university. But life and history took over…”
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Cousin Esther Goes to Chicago
by Cori Baill. “All that time I’ve been working here, mopping the floors, emptying the trash, washing down rooms, and watching the wet-behind-the-ears young pup doctors learn their business.”
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Double Exposure
by Elisha Waldman. “Our hospital in Jerusalem feels haunted. Not, as one might think, by the ghosts of former patients, but rather by the living…”
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The Family Farm
by Wyatt Bandt. “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.”
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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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Tethered to the Body
by Jane Kokernak. “There is only illness, and there is no way to make that sexy. After several years as a medical device wearer, I know.”
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All Our Relations
by Jeanine Pfeiffer. “What if our evolution as humans was measured by how graciously and profoundly we related to the living world around us?”
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By My Own Hand
by Anita Darcel Taylor. “Mental anguish can be as unruly as any terminal illness. It can, unfortunately, orchestrate its own end.”
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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 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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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.”
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You Know What She Means
by Elizabeth Schultz. “And here is another thing you do not remember: your parents telling you that you have polio, and that they are taking you to St. Margaret’s Hospital in Northridge.”
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The Practice of Cleaning
by Sarah Nance. “My mother knows there are three / ways to be clean: to take a mess / that’s there and cover it…”
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Six Weeks into Chemotherapy
by Laura Paul Watson. “To be unseen, unprayed for, to be unhugged / in the grocery store and left alone // to select a melon.”
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May Cause
by Elspeth Jensen. “Take this, take it with crackers or bread. Do not. Do not. Do not / chew or crush. You are pregnant, may become pregnant, or are / breast-feeding.”
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Conversation with a Dead Poet
by Eleonora Luongo. “I kept them all. The poems, I mean. When I / tried to tell your mother, she’d leaned in, said,…”
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Consumption
by Rebekah Denison Hewitt. “There were days when death ballooned / like the bloated stomach of a sheep / which lay stiffened in the field.”
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Ode to Impotence
by Jonathan Stillerman. “Thank goodness every so often / a monument closes down / for renovation…”
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Phosphorescence
by Zhu Jian. “Passing by the burial ground, / I see some flickers of light. / A friend tells me / it’s the bones that flash.”
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Printouts
by Dylan Landis. “Janet reported that gray taffeta / curtained her walls. It was delicate. When touched, the ashen silk dissolved / around her thumbprint….”
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Poem For A Friend Growing Lighter and Lighter
by Abe Louise Young. “Your left hand is a dead fish, your left leg a sunken anchor, your / left eye a black mussel…”
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Wilderness
by Paula Bohince. “My sister drove, / so long that what began before daybreak / ended in the same pitch, / and we barely noticed those in-between hours, // though this morning we laughed…”
This week's feat. issue—part of our 25th anniversary lookback—revisits past BLR Prizewinners.📚️ Read three winners: "Step-Down" by Nitin K. Ahuja, "In My Head" by Avra Aron, & "Drought Pastoral" by Michael M. Weinstein, plus more in our weekly blog post. https://blreview.org/issue-highlights/issue-42-highlights
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Take some time to browse new issues out this month from @AfterDinnerCon, @GAY_ALOCASIA, @ANMLY_LIT, @BLReview, @ChestnutReview, @Orion_Magazine, @spaceandtimemag, @WTRlitmag, and more CLMP members!
This week's featured issue—part of our 25th anniversary lookback—marked BLR's 20th anniversary. An expanded issue, it included an editorial roundtable with the BLR team and new writing by over 50 authors. Read 3 issue highlights & more in our weekly post: https://blreview.org/issue-highlights/issue-41-highlights
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