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Bryant Literary Review

This website is no longer active. For current and previous issues of the Bryant Literary Review and updated submission guidelines, please visit https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/blr/.

Volume 21, May 2020

This edition of the BLR features short stories and poetry from around the world: India, Israel, and the United States. We hope that this collection leaves you yearning to delve deeper into the complexity of the human psyche and the world around you.

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Volume 20, May 2019

In Following the Equator, Mark Twain wrote, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

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Volume 19, May 2018

Art finds its way through most things in life, allowing one to explain the unexplainable. It provides a channel of empathy, looking into a snapshot of life through words alone.

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Volume 18, May 2017

The pliable nature of words allows for a multitude of meanings and opens up written creation to all people. If the purpose of literature is to convey a story, a meaning, a feeling, then good writing does not require an elite literary mind.

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Volume 17, May 2016

Each time we come together to create the Bryant Literary Review we encounter a different adventure. We get the great pleasure of listening to literary voices from all around the world, living their narratives through the sounds, sights, and smells they choose to transcribe.

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Volume 16, May 2015

We see or hear or feel and know we must create. Until we express that idea, we carry this tension – this need to release our thoughts – that is only relieved bit by bit as words fill a page, or brushstrokes texturize a canvas.

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Volume 15, May 2014

Our 15th anniversary edition, featuring work from the current and past two poets laureate of Rhode Island – Rick Benjamin, Lisa Starr, and Tom Chandler.

Fifteen years is an extraordinary run for a literary journal, and the fact that the BLR is still going strong is a real credit to our staff and the support we receive from Bryant University.

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Volume 14, May 2013

What kind of life is one without vivid illustration? How boring it must be to sit in a cubicle all day, do as you’re told, and only have an hour-long lunch break. It took me long to realize that I crave more and have more to offer. Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in the ways of what we’ve been taught; it’s up to us to recognize our own potential.

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Volume 13, May 2012

Poems and stories, like all art, are the scenery of life. They enhance and broaden our perspectives about the world around us. They can be a cathartic source of release from tension built up in our daily lives.

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Volume 12, May 2011

This collection is a testament to the power that writing and the liberal arts can have on the wholeness of an individual. Each year the BLR receives thousands of submissions from dozens of countries and across the U.S. This poses a great challenge to the editorial staff, since we can only publish a small percentage of what we are sent. I am confident that you will enjoy reading each piece included in this year’s issue.

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Volume 11, May 2010

We live in a time when jobs are diminishing while the pursuit of wealth remains out of control. Our days are darkened by the perils of global warming and the threat of terrorism. But despite these challenges, the world pushes on. There is still a light that shines through in creativity and the imagination.

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Volume 10, May 2009

A literary journal mimics an infant in the Dark Ages in that it has a short life expectancy and is likely poor. With this in mind, the Bryant Literary Review celebrates its tenth anniversary.

In that time, we have received poems on graph paper and postcards, as well as a laminated, pocket-sized poem. Other notables include a “bonus poem” included as part of a cover letter which explained the absence of a self addressed stamped envelope, pictures of a squirrel…

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Volume 9, May 2008

Each day, millions follow a routine in a systematic fashion, going through the motions. In the back of their minds dwell thoughts of the following day’s work, questions of politics, finance and, of course, the future. There is often no time to enjoy any aspect of life the way it was intended to be enjoyed.

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Volume 8, May 2007

Graham Greene claimed, “Writing is a form of therapy. Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.” It also provides hope—the hope that when society seems to value activities that dull the mind, there remain those intellectual and inspiring visionaries who provide friction on the slippery slope.

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