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Survival Strategies by Tennison S. Black (University of Georgia Press, 2023) Tennison S. Black’s poetry collection Survival Strategies (University of Georgia Press, 2023), selected by Adrienne Su as the winner of the National Poetry Series, bristles with the sound, texture, and experience of life in the Sonoran. Black digs up roots, tenderly dissecting the speaker’s …

Winner of the 2023 49th Parallel Award for Poetry I want to fit something here about how my father used to console me—told me I was a poor thinker because, when I was a baby, I got so smart so fast God placed a worm in my ear to eat my wisdom. Balance me out. …

Winner of the 2023 Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction I fell fast, to my knees, both hands buried deep in the mud of a newly turned field saturated by the Seattle January rain. I bent to the earth, too tired to move under the weight of my upended twenty-five-year-old world. My mother, now sleeping in …

With her award-winning memoir Red Paint (Counterpoint, 2022), Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe has emerged as a writer who can convey deeply personal material while delighting readers with her mastery of language and formal experimentation. With her poetic debut Rose Quartz (Milkweed, 2023), LaPointe shows similar prowess as a poet who can dance along the line between …

Winner of the 2023 Tobias Wolff Award It was the eighties and we didn’t know better. We microwaved leftovers in plastic containers, pressing our faces against the radiating glass door, watching our meal spin glamorous circles beneath a warm amber glow. We ate hot dogs cold, straight from the package. We sprayed cheese from a …

from “وطن Vatan,” Parissa Rad Dear Readers, Thank you so much for being here to read this new issue of Bellingham Review. This has required so much hard work and dedication from the team, but it’s also been a blast to help put together this incredible issue full of top-tier stories, essays, art, and poems. …

“وطن Vatan” Medium: Paintings are gouache on paper; the teapot is stoneware, glaze, gold luster, hung with fishing line. “Vatan” translates to “homeland.” Artist Statement: Nostalgic memories of growing up Iranian and both the utilitarian and decorative artforms that originate from Iran inspire me deeply. The rich detail and color palettes of Persian Miniature art, …

Bellingham Review is so excited to share with you a folio of poetry that emerged from the 50th Association for Ethnic Studies Conference at California State University, Los Angeles, in 2022. This poetry folio on home, nourishment, and community features the creative work of Shayda Kafai, María I. Morales-Sánchez, Nicole Leopardo, and Pau Abustan. Poetry …

You can read/view Michelle Peñaloza’s poems and collages in BR’s Issue 86 here. I. I started making collages at the start of this year, the day after I learned the pregnancy, we’d been trying to make happen for two years, was not viable. The day I waited for a way to help my body—what is …

“Falling In Love on the Pow Wow Grounds” Medium: Digital This piece was created to celebrate indigenous femmes, joy, and love. I also created this piece for me, as a way to celebrate my own later in life coming out. Savannah LeCornu is an Indigenous artist and theatre maker originally from Ketchikan, Alaska who now …