Contest Submission - Nonfiction
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The BLR Prizes award outstanding writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body.
2027 Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction
Judged by Meghan O'Rourke
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.
BLR PRIZE GUIDELINES - CREATIVE NONFICTION:
- Deadline: July 1, 2026 (11:59 p.m. EST)
- First prize is $1,000 and publication in the Spring 2027 issue of BLR. Honorable mention winners will receive $300 and publication in the Spring 2027 issue of BLR.
- We are looking for essays that reach beyond the standard ‘illness narrative’ to develop a topic in an engaging and original manner. Incorporate anecdotes that feel alive, and dazzle us with thoughtful and creative analysis that allows these anecdotes to serve a larger purpose. Please note that we do not publish graphic narratives, academic discourses, or works with footnotes.
- 5,000 words maximum
- Do not put your name or other identifying information on the manuscript document (or in the filename). Manuscripts are read blindly by reviewers, editors, and judges.
- Work previously published in print or electronically will not be considered. For BLR, “published work” means published in print in North America, or published on the Internet in electronic journals, e-zines, academic websites, and other “public” or “official” websites. Works posted on personal blogs or websites will be considered on a case-by-case basis. We ask that authors be honest about web postings. (If a work is discovered to have been posted or published elsewhere—and not openly acknowledged by the author in advance—we will remove it from consideration.)
- Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but we ask that you notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere. We regret that there can be no refunds or substitutions for withdrawn work.
- All contest entries will also be considered for regular publication. If you submit to the contest, there is no need to submit the same piece again under the general submissions category.
- Students/friends/colleagues/relations of a judge are not permitted to enter submissions to that judge's genre.
- BLR acquires first-time North American rights, and the right to reprint in anthologies. After publication, all other rights revert to the author and the work may be reprinted as long as appropriate acknowledgement to BLR is made.
- Contest winners are usually announced in November. Decisions for the rest of Issue 52 (to be published in spring 2027) will be made by the end of the year.
We encourage you to read BLR before you submit. Sample writing is available on our website.
We're happy to offer a 50% subscription discount to all authors who participate in the contest. (If you live outside the US, you must select the International option. Otherwise, we'll be unable to ship the journal to you. Thanks!)