2011 JUDGES
Mary Biddinger is the author of the poetry collections Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007), Saint Monica (Black Lawrence Press, 2011), and O Holy Insurgency (Black Lawrence Press, forthcoming September 2012), and co-editor of The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics (U Akron Press, 2011). Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Bat City Review, Blackbird, Forklift, Ohio, H_NGM_N, iO, Redivider, and South Dakota Review. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Akron, where she edits the Akron Series in Poetry, the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics, and Barn Owl Review.
Kate Bernheimer's most recent book is Horse, Flower, Bird, "a collection readers won't soon forget, one that redefines the fairy tale into something wholly original" (Booklist). She is the author of a trilogy of novels--The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold, The Complete Tales of Merry Gold, and The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold. Among other collections, she has edited My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. She is Associate Professor & Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette.
Kaya Oakes' nonfiction book, Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture, was published by Henry Holt in 2009 and was selected as a San Francisco Chronicle notable book. She's also the author of a collection of poetry, Telegraph, which received the Transcontinental Poetry Prize from Pavement Saw Press. Her third book, a hybrid memoir/ethnography/theological rant, is called Radical Reinvention, and is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press in 2012. In 2002, Kaya co-founded Kitchen Sink Magazine, which received the Utne Independent Press Award for Best New Magazine in 2003. She edited and wrote for Kitchen Sink until it ended its print run in 2007. Since 1999, she's taught writing at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned an MFA in creative writing at Saint Mary's College. Kaya has been the recipient of teaching fellowships from the Mellon Faculty Institute and the Bay Area Writing Project, as well as writing awards from the Academy of American Poets. She's also twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in nonfiction.
2012 JUDGES
Marilyn Kallet is the author of 15 books, including Packing Light: New and Selected Poems (Black Widow Press, 2009). Her next book of poems, The Love That Moves Me, will be published early in 2013. She has translated Paul Eluard's Last Love Poems and Surrealist Benjamin Pˇret's The Big Game. In 2005, Kallet was inducted into the East Tennessee Literary Hall of Fame in Poetry. She has won the Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Fellowship in Poetry, and has served as a literary arts advisor to the TAC. Recently she judged the state competition for Tennessee Out Loud, co-sponsored by the National Poetry Foundation and the Tennessee Arts Commission. Marilyn Kallet has performed her poetry in theaters and on campuses across the United States, as well as in France, and in Warsaw and Cracow, as a guest of the United States Embassy's "America Presents" program. Recently Garrison Keillor read her poem, "Fireflies," on The Writer's Almanac. Dr. Kallet is Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee, where she is also Professor of English. She also teaches poetry workshops for the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in Auvillar, France.
John McManus was born in Knoxville and grew up in Maryville, Tennessee. He is the author of the novel Bitter Milk (2005) and the short story collections Born on a Train (2003) and Stop Breakin Down (2000), all published by Picador USA. In 2000 he became the youngest-ever winner of the Whiting Writers' Award following the publication of Stop Breakin Down. His fiction and non-fiction have also appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Oxford American, The Harvard Review, StorySouth, Columbia, Paraphilia, and Night Train, as well as the fiction anthologies Surreal South '09, Surreal South '11, and Degrees of Elevation. His writing fellowships and awards include the New Writing Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the James A. Michener fellowship at the University of Texas, where he earned his MFA in 2004. McManus is a professor of creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and he also teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Goddard College in Vermont. He is contributing editor for Fiddleblack, a literary journal dedicated to creative writing with a strong sense of place.
Lee Martin is the author of the novels, The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; Quakertown; and Break the Skin. He has also published three memoirs, From Our House, Turning Bones and Such a Life. His first book was the short story collection, The Least You Need To Know. He is the co-editor of Passing the Word: Writers on Their Mentors. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper's, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.
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