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— Everything BLR. —
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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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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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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 ~~ 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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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 38 highlights
World War II-inspired cover art, 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 37 highlights
Exploring a good life, plus much more as we continue to share issue highlights throughout our 25th anniversary year.
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BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 36 highlights
Literature as refuge, 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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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.
-
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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A Brutal Sweetness
by Abby Nance. “Last night my breath changed from quiet to labored heaving. We all wonder: will this be my last bath?”
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The Sounds of Jilotzingo
by Mehr-Afarin Kohan. “Now her praying to the clouds sounded stupid because I was old enough to know that nothing and no one would ever be descending. And old enough to know, something had broken in my mother’s backbone forever.”
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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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Still Life
by Marpessa Dawn Outlaw. “From the moment my friend George stepped from his loft to his death at the bottom of the building’s elevator shaft, there’s been one thing I can say I’ve known for sure—that love is dangerously overrated.”
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The Road to Carville
by Pat Tompkins. “It was a shame anyone had to go to Carville, a pity there was no cure, but Gar had been to war and knew how little fairness had to do with anything.”
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A Brief Disclaimer To Whom It May Concern on the Chapter You Are About to Read
by Simon Eskow. “Princess Ugmo was a sulky curled-up thing with the skin of a plucked and boiled chicken. She sat apart from the other patients in the dayroom, scanning the gossip pages, searching vainly for her boldfaced name.”
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The Levitron
by Robert Oldshue. “Let me tell you one thing: these know-it-alls who come around hawking computerized this and that to make Shady Rest work like the Holiday Inn have never worked in a nursing home.”
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The Great Imitator
by Leslie Patterson. “I am a disease. My very existence poisons my father’s life.”
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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 Plagiarist
By Hollis Seamon. “’Why?’ Althea leaned toward the splotchy-pale student who sat in her small office chair, his wide khaki thighs overflowing its seat.”
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If You Scared, Say You Scared
by Sheree L. Greer. “Every time I think I learn something about myself, about my body and how to best treat it or love it, my body tells me that control is a lie.”
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Batteries in Our Times
by Dwaine Rieves. “‘A really great deal on batteries, you hear?’ my father yells to me, his voice full of its old energy and a half-chewed biscuit. We’re eating breakfast, his attention on the television, mine on a newspaper photograph that captured President Obama at the groundbreaking of a new factory in Michigan, a battery…
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A Nigerian Attempts Therapy
by Ucheoma Onwutuebe. “I am a Nigerian woman, plagued by Nigerian womanly problems. When I moved to America for graduate school last summer, I believed this new country would shield me from those nagging afflictions.”
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In My Head
by Avra Aron. “You are twelve years old and your mind is like a game of hot potato. Your thoughts are quick and jerky, and you need to get past them before you get burned.”
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Claiming Missing Inheritance
by Jack Lancaster. “At the Whitney Museum, David Wojnarowicz’s portrait of his friend Peter Hujar claims its own wall. Ten feet back, I twist from parallel to perpendicular, unexpectedly lingering instead of walking by.”
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Anticipatory Grief
by Misty Kiwak Jacobs. “After Father Marcel died, he came to me in a dream and said, “I liked you very much.” Not the Great Commandment that he kept, his job description. Gloriously less…Those words his imprimatur on my grief.”
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A Pure and Lovely Flame
by Sandy Woodson. “For Descartes, the pineal gland is a magical place where our souls and personality and identity shimmer in a night sky.”
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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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The Empath
by Stephanie C. Smith. “New Orleans—my home from the start. I fit better on streets that sag, where live oaks lay low, where rain falls in sheets all afternoon…”
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Askew
by Esther K. Willison. “It gets hold of me, I wrote less than a year after her death. Somehow it creeps up.”
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My Friend Paul Says
by Dominika Bednarska. “if I slurred my speech, if I stuttered, / if I could not swallow, which variable / would make me less worthy of living?”
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Saint Elizabeth
by Rachel Contreni Flynn. “My sister left for a few weeks, and the lid lifted / off the stock pot. The house filled with the possibility / of eating bread…”
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Toast
by Michael Montlack. “Once a woman who lost her mother / told me the story of a guru rushing / to satisfy his dying mentor’s last wish.”
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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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Socks
by Meg Kearney. “My father’s body has ceased to shock me. / His skin runs over his bones like a slow / river, rippling where belly meets hip.”
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A Spring Without Us
by Talia Bloch. “The playground has been locked for months. / A swing coughs dryly in the shade.”
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Ambulance
by Halvard Johnson. “This restaurant has a fine ambulance.” / What my friend, of course, must have / meant was that this restoration / had a fine ambience…”
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OCD
by Sarah Giragosian. “To survive this exile, you will need / to hold court with the moon, store the memory / of its light in a mason jar for later.”
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Her Marked Black Body
by Cynthia Parker-Ohene. “The macabre moon / Once lunged at me / It hisses red / Hangs voyeuristically / Wants me to stand in its balkanized light.”
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Speech
by Laurie Klein. “Lock that tongue to the roof / of your mouth, the therapist says, / eyeing the trach / at the base of her throat.”
This week's featured issue—part of our 25th anniversary lookback—is "Reading the Body," a theme issue on the body & how it speaks to us. (It was also the first issue of BLR to be published independently!) Read 3 issue highlights & more in our weekly post: https://blreview.org/issue-highlights/issue-39-highlights
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A hundred years ago, Virginia Woolf published her second most famous essay, “On Being Ill.” Written during a prolonged bout of illness the previous fall, Woolf asked why sickness—an unavoidable feature of human experience—is represented so rarely and inadequately in literature.
BLR's 25th Anniversary Issue is here! 🎉 And to celebrate it, we're welcoming authors from the issue for a live reading. 📖
Join us online on Thurs, 10/22, for an evening of new poems, stories, & essays, plus the joy of community & connection.
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/bellevueliteraryreview/2437613
This week's featured issue—part of our 25th anniversary lookback—revisits past BLR Prizewinners, with more to explore in our weekly blog post. Plus, the colorful WWII-inspired cover has a story of its own. 🎨 https://blreview.org/issue-highlights/issue-38-highlights
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