Happy 20th Anniversary Bellevue Literary Review
Bellevue Literary Review is celebrating 20 years of publication with Issue 41, the 20th Anniversary Issue! Founding Editor Danielle Ofri opens the issue with a foreword that details the journal’s beginnings.
“Pulling together an inaugural issue during the summer of 2001 was both heady and nerve-wracking, as we trod uncharted territory in everything from poetic sensibility and creative-nonfiction definition to font size and paper weight. We packed the first issue off to press in the first week of September and then the attacks of 9/11 occurred. Everything ground to a halt in New York City, logistically and emotionally. Not only could we not get our print run delivered, but we could hardly muster the spirit to find joy in any accomplishment. In the heavy pall of grief, everything else seemed inconsequential.”
Ofri goes on to recount how they moved forward and what happened in the wake of the tragedy of 9/11. In the following pages, readers can check out a 20th Anniversary Editorial Roundtable where “editors past and present, plus our founding publisher, [ . . . ] offer reflections on the BLR‘s founding and its evolution over two decades of publishing.” Check out the issue here.
