fiction

BLR Spring Reading: Winning Words

A celebration of BLR’s 44th issue and the winners of the 2023 BLR literary prizes. Featuring winners Lara Palmqvist, Jehanne Dubrow, and Caroline Harper New. Interviews by BLR editors Doris W. Cheng, Scott Oglesby, and Abba Belgrave. Additional readings by honorable mentions Karen K. Ford, Sabah Parsa, and Karan Kapoor. Hosted by Danielle Ofri. More

NPR’s Morning Edition

NPR’s Neda Ulaby interviews Danielle Ofri and Celeste Ng on “Morning Edition” about BLR’s 20th Anniversary (and how a literary journal came to be founded in a storied public hospital). More

BLR Turns 20!

For 20 years, Bellevue Literary Review has been at the forefront of publishing at intersection of healthcare and the arts. For 20 years, Bellevue Literary Review has been at the forefront of publishing at intersection of healthcare and the arts. BLR publishes fiction, poetry, & nonfiction about health, illness, and healing. Watch the historic celebration. Co-hosted by BLR editor-in-chief Danielle Ofri and actor Kelly AuCoin More

Monday

Maybe it was simply human nature that no one wanted to be sick on weekends. Or admit to it. Or do something about it. Whatever the reason, Mondays were always the days of reckoning: weekend walls of denial came crashing down, weekend indiscretions faced their due, weekend warriors paid their price in blood. Admissions poured into the hospital. It was as though the map of Brooklyn had been curled up like a cone and all the human wreckage and misery funneled down to the tip where East Memorial Municipal Hospital sat, as it had for the past century since it opened, with its doors flung widely and indiscriminately open. More

Literary Publishing at Bellevue Hospital

Watch a video about literary publishing at the oldest public hospital in the country. The Bellevue Literary Review and the Bellevue Literary Press are the first ever literary publishing ventures in a medical center More

Gifts of the Magi: For a young doctor far from home, an unexpected present

“Bitter winds churned up First Avenue and tore through the pathetically thin scrubs that Bellevue doled out to its interns. The December sky glowered the same leaden-green color of the bile that Dr. Kamal Singh was siphoning from the gut of Mr. Bill Porter, a homeless alcoholic with a Southern accent, a jauntily curled mustache and a battered walking stick. His skin was sallow and his eyes jaundiced. He squinted at Dr. Singh. ”Thought they weren’t giving visas to Arabs these days,” he rasped.

Dr. Singh controlled his temper. ”Mr. Porter, we don’t discriminate here against doctors or against patients.” He sighed. ”And I’m Sikh.” He pointed to his indigo turban for good measure, but how would a redneck bigot from Texas know Sikhism from Buddhism from vegetarianism?…” More

A Literary Review at Bellevue? Believe It

“Just tell me a story,” Dr. Danielle Ofri admonishes her medical students and interns at morning rounds. To Dr. Ofri, an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital Center, a part-time writer and the editor in chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, every patient’s history is a mystery story, a narrative that unfolds full of surprises, exposing the vulnerability at the human core. More

An Outbreak of Poetry (and Prose) at Bellevue

The waiting area in Bellevue Hospital was full. Every chair was taken. But the people kept streaming in. More chairs had to be brought in.  It wasn’t clear if the room could accommodate everyone. This wasn’t the emergency room or the clinic waiting area, however. It was the scene of the Bellevue Literary Review poetry … More