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
  • The Facts

    The Facts

    Occasional lapses in taste or discretion within this narrative are entirely intentional. So, if it seems inappropriate to interrupt a tragic drowning with observations about the nesting habits of local birds, then consider this… // continue reading

  • SUTHY Syndrome

    SUTHY Syndrome

    I shit you not. Right in front of the elevator that spits you into our hospice, there is—get ready for this—a harpist. I mean, isn’t that like a teensy bit premature? // continue reading

  • Crosscurrents

    Crosscurrents

    Whenever you don’t want to be who you are, you call yourself Margaret Jefferson. And that’s who you are now, or who you are when you’re not yourself, walking into the conference room of an accounting firm in a random… // continue reading

  • Subway Stories

    Subway Stories

    My son is a rule follower and rules generate endless questions, the answers to which often reflect the crushing reality that I cannot guarantee his safety, that there is an unsettling element of chance in a city of over eight… // continue reading

  • Visual Anguish and Looking at Art

    Visual Anguish and Looking at Art

    I understand these were commercial jetliners, not ICBMs, that split the steel and glass of the World Trade Center. Someone, a person, had a long-standing vision, intentions, imagined the explosions and death that would follow. // continue reading

  • Going South

    Going South

    by Natalie Pearson. “I make amends with small gifts—a loaf of crusty bread, a Louie Prima CD, lilacs in a mason jar. This little drive to nowhere would be just such a gift.” // continue reading

As featured on NPR’s Morning Edition

NPR’s Neda Ulaby reported on BLR’s 20th Anniversary, featuring BLR Editor Danielle Ofri, along with author Celeste Ng. Long before Celeste Ng reached stratospheric popularity with Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere, she was an emerging author, whose story “Girls, at Play” appeared in BLR and then won a Pushcart Prize.

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