2010 JUDGES
Erin Belieu is the author of three poetry collections-- Infanta, One Above & One Below and Black Box--all from Copper Canyon Press. Black Box was a recent finalist for the Los Angles Times Book Awards. She is also the co editor of the anthology The Extraordinary Tide (Columbia University Press, 2001). Belieu is the co director, with Cate Marvin, of VIDA: Women In Literary arts and is the director of the Creative writing Program at florida State University.
Michael Knight is the author of two novels, two collections of short stories and a collection of novellas. His fiction has been published in magazines and journals like Esquire, The New Yorker and Oxford American and has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories, Best of the South, and New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2009. He lives in Knoxville with his wife and two daughters and teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee.
T.A. Noonan's Petticoat Government, a hybrid poetry/nonfiction collection, was published by Gold Wake Press in 2011. The Bone Folders, a fictionalized account of a south Louisiana coven, received the Heartland Poetry Prize and is forthcoming later this year from Sundress Publications. Currently, she lives in Florida.
2011 JUDGES
Mary Biddinger is the author of three collections of poetry: 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 one volume of criticism: The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics (U Akron Press, 2011). Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines, including Anti-, Copper Nickel, Devil's Lake, diode, Minnesota Review, Puerto del Sol, Redivider, Toad, Waccamaw, and South Dakota Review. She teaches literature and creative writing at The University of Akron, where she directs the NEOMFA program. She also edits Barn Owl Review, the Akron Series in Poetry, and the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics.
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.
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