We are thrilled to announce that this year’s contest judges are Natalie Diaz, Daniel Mason, and Meghan O’Rourke. Meet them below and get to know their remarkable work.
Entries for the 2027 BLR Literary Prizes open on March 1, 2026. Submit your best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction until July 1, 2026.
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 2027 issue of BLR.
Click here to see the 2026 BLR Literary Prize Winners.
Natalie Diaz
Judge, John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry
Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She is the author of two poetry collections, Post-Colonial Love Poem (Graywolf, 2020), winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, and When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press 2012). Diaz is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University where she directs ASU’s Center for Imagination in the Borderlands.
Daniel Mason
Judge, Goldenberg Prize for Fiction
Daniel Mason is an associate professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry, and author of works including A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; North Woods, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Country People (2026).
Meghan O’Rourke
Judge, Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction:
Meghan O’Rourke is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the best-selling memoir The Long Goodbye. Her most recent book of poems, Sun In Days, was named a Top Ten Poetry Book of the Year by the New York Times; her debut Halflife was a finalist for Britain’s Forward First Book Prize. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Whiting Nonfiction Award, and a Front Page award, she is a professor of creative writing at Yale University and the executive editor of The Yale Review.
