2025 BLR Literary Prizes

Entries for the 2025 BLR Literary Prizes are now open! Submit your best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from March 1 to July 1, 2024.

The BLR Prizes award outstanding writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body. For each category, first prize is $1,000 and honorable mention is $300. Winners are published in the spring 2024 issue of BLR.

Goldenberg Prize for Fiction

Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction

John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry

Click here to see the 2024 BLR Literary Prize Winners.

Nonfiction Judge: Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of The Collected Schizophrenias, a New York Times bestseller; its publication is the result of having won the 2016 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Her debut novel, The Border of Paradise, has received accolades from LitHub, NPR Books, and the Chicago Review of Books. Wang was selected by Granta for their once-a-decade Best Young American Novelists list of 21 authors under 40. In 2018, she received the prestigious Whiting Award for Nonfiction. https://esmewang.com/

Fiction Judge: Wayétu Moore is the author of She Would Be King, released by Graywolf Press in September, 2018. Her memoir, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women was also released with Graywolf on June 2, 2020. She is the recipient of the 2019 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction. https://www.wayetu.com

Poetry Judge: Leila Mottley is the author of the novel Nightcrawling, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller. She was also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. She was born and raised in Oakland, where she continues to live. Her debut poetry collection woke up no light will be published on April 16, 2024. https://www.leilamottley.com/