Andre Dubus III - Panel Chair - Andre Dubus III is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories , and the novels Bluesman and House of Sand and Fog. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994, The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize, and was a Finalist for the Prix de Rome Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. Now an Academy Award nominated motion picture and published in thirty countries, his novel House of Sand and Fog was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award , Booksense Book of the Year, and was an Oprah Book Club Selection and #1 New York Times bestseller. A member of PEN American Center and the Executive Board of PEN New England, Andre Dubus III has served as a panelist for The National Endowment for the Arts and has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University, and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Judges
Rikki Ducornet - Rikki Ducornet is the author of two collections of short fiction, a book of essays and seven novels including The Jade Cabinet, a finalist for The National Book Critics' Circle Award, and The Fan Maker's Inquisition, a Los Angleles Times Book of the Year. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, The Bunting Institute and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. In 1989 she received a Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters, and, in 2004, The Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized.

Cristina Garcia - Cuban-born American novelist and journalist Cristina Garcia established a reputation as an important new voice in Latin American literature with her debut novel Dreaming in Cuban (1992), in which she explores the displacement of personal and cultural identity of Cuban emigres. Dreaming in Cuban was nominated for a National Book Award. Garcia's second novel, The Aguero Sisters (1997), continued her exploration of the fracturing of identity and the quest for what constitutes Cuban-ness. A former Time correspondent and Miami bureau chief, Garcia left Havana with her family when she was two and grew up in New York City. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award.

Tom LeClair - Tom LeClair received a Ph.D. in English from Duke University in 1972, and is now Nathaniel Ropes Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He has published a collection of literary interviews, Anything Can Happen (with Larry McCaffery), two books of criticism (In the Loop and The Art of Excess), and three novels--Passing Off, Well-Founded Fear, and Passing On. His novel The Liquidators will be published in January by Greekworks. He has written hundreds of reviews for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Nation, Atlantic Monthly, American Book Review, and many other periodicals. His work has also appeared in TriQuarterly, Paris Review, Witness, Fiction International, and other journals.

Anna Quindlen - Anna Quindlen’s books have appeared on fiction, nonfiction and self-help bestseller lists, and her columns have won her many of journalism’s most prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. Currently she writes the Last Word column on the back page of Newsweek, and for many years she was a columnist for The New York Times, becoming only the third woman to write for the paper’s influential op ed page. In addition, she has written four bestselling novels: Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue and Blessings. She has published three collections of her columns, Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud, and Loud and Clear, as well as How Reading Changed My Life and Imagined London. Her book A Short Guide to A Happy Life has sold more than a million copies. It was followed by Being Perfect; it, too, became a national bestseller. Ms. Quindlen is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Barnard College, where she is chair of the board of trustees. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary degrees from more than a dozen American universities.

Nonfiction

Brenda Wineapple - Panel Chair - Brenda Wineapple’s books include Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner, Sister Brother Gertrude and Leo Stein, and the award-winning Hawthorne: A Life. She has edited the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier for the Library of America’s American Poets Project and has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and twice from the National Endowment for the Humanities; she is also a fellow of the New York University Institute for the Humanities. She presently teaches nonfiction writing at Columbia University and literature at Union College, where she is Doris Zemurray Stone Professor. She is now writing a book on Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Knopf.)

Judges
Mark Bowden - Mark Bowden is the author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo. He is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, a documentary film producer, and does occasional commentary for National Public Radio. His other books are: Doctor Dealer, (Warner Books, 1987), Bringing the Heat (Knopf, 1994), Our Finest Day, (Chronicle, 2002) and Finders Keepers (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002), and Road Work (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004). Black Hawk Down was a finalist for the 1999 National Book Award, and both it and Killing Pablo received Overseas Press Club Awards. Twice in the last two years he has been a finalist in the National Magazine Awards for articles published in The Atlantic Monthly. He has also written for The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and many among other publications, and has lectured at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Yale University Law School, Georgetown University, the USMA at West Point, CIA headquarters, and the Pentagon. He worked as a consultant and screenwriter on the film version of Black Hawk Down, and is working on the upcoming Paramount/Dreamworks adaptation of Killing Pablo. His next book, Guests of the Ayatollah, is to be published in Fall, 2005, and has been optioned for screen by Scott Rudin. He teaches journalism and creative writing at his alma mater, Loyola College of Maryland.

Dennis Covington - Dennis Covington teaches creative writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He writes on the South for The New York Times and is the author of the award-winning novel Lizard. His awards include: the Delacorte Prize for young adult first novel, Delacorte Press, 1991, for Lizard; Barrie Stavis Playwriting Award for Best New Play of the Year, National Theater Conference, 1995, for adaptation of Lizard; National Book Award Finalist, 1995, and Rea Non- Fiction Prize, Boston Book Review, 1996, both for Salvation on Sand Mountain.

Tony Horwitz - Tony Horwitz is the author of Baghdad Without A Map and other Misadventures in Arabia, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, and Blue Latitudes: Boldy Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before. He has worked as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and a staff writer for the New Yorker, and received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1995. A resident of Waterford, Virginia, he is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies this academic year.

Gregory Wolfe - Gregory Wolfe is Writer in Residence at Seattle Pacific University and the founder and editor of Image, one of America’s leading literary quarterlies. He also directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at SPU. Among his books are Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith, and Mystery, Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography and Sacred Passion: The Art of William Schickel. Wolfe is also the editor of The New Religious Humanists: A Reader and the co-author of several books about raising children, including Books That Build Character and Bless This House: Prayers for Families and Children. He lives with his wife and four children in Seattle, Washington.

Poetry

Carl Phillips - Panel Chair - Carl Phillips is the author of seven books of poetry: The Rest of Love, finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and winner of both the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Men's Poetry; Rock Harbor; The Tether, winner of the 2002 Kingsley Tufts Award; Pastoral, winner of the Lambda Literary Award; From the Devotions, finalist for the National Book Award; Cortege, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and In the Blood, which won the Morse Poetry Prize. The recipient of prizes and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of American Poets, Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

Judges
John Balaban - John Balaban is the author of eleven books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets' Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Balaban is Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. In Spring, 2006, Copper Canyon Press will publish his new book of poems, entitled Path, Crooked Path.

Carol Frost - Carol Frost's career as a poet spans nearly twenty-five years. Her first book, The Salt Lesson, was published in 1976 by Graywolf Press. Since then, eight collections of her poetry have appeared in print: Liar's Dice (1978), The Fearful Child (1983), Day of the Body (1986), Chimera (1990), which was the runner-up for the Poets's Prize, Pure (1994), Venus & Don Juan (1996), which was short listed for the Kingsley-Tufts award, Love & Scorn, New and Selected Poems (2000), which was a Poetry Book Club selection (Academy of American Poets) and short listed for the Pulitzer Prize, and I Will Say Beauty (2003). The Queen's Desertion is forthcoming in the spring of 2006. Frost is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three Pushcart Prizes (with nominations every year for the last sixteen years), and magazine prizes from Ploughshares and Prairie Schooner. Her poems and essays appear in such magazine's as Paris Review, Kenyon Review, The New York Times, New England Review, Atlantic Monthly, TriQuarterly, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and have been read on The Writer's Almanac (Minnesota Public Radio). Frost teaches at Hartwick College and directs the Catskill Poetry Workshop. She has also taught for the Master of Fine Arts programs at Washington University, Wichita State University, and the low residency program at Warren Wilson College. She has been on the faculty for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Lawson Fusao Inada - Lawson Fusao Inada's recent poetry includes, Legends From Camp, Drawing the Line. He is the editor of Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience. He has received an American Book Award and Oregon Book Award. Mr. Inada is an NEA and Guggenheim fellow and served as a judge for the National Poetry Series, Lenore Marshall.

Julie Kane - Julie Kane has a B.A. in English from Cornell University, an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in English from Louisiana State University. A former George Bennett Fellow in Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy and New Orleans Writer-in-Residence at Tulane University, she is an associate professor of English at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Her second full-length poetry collection, Rhythm & Booze (University of Illinois Press, 2003) was a winner in the National Poetry Series and a finalist for the 2005 Poets’ Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, London Magazine, Verse Daily, Feminist Studies, and The Formalist. She is also an editor, translator, poetry and poetics scholar, and creative nonfiction writer.

Young People's Literature

Liz Rosenberg - Panel Chair - Liz Rosenberg is the author of more than 20 books for young readers, from picture books to poetry anthologies to young adult novels. Her work has won an IRA Children's Choice Award, The Lee Bennett Hopkins Prize, The Claudia Lewis Prize, The Paterson Prize, and other honors. Her newest books for young readers are I JUST HOPE IT'S LETHAL: Poems of Sadness, Madness and Joy from Houghton Mifflin, and WE WANTED YOU: An Adoption Story and ON CHRISTMAS EVE, from Roaring Brook Press. She is professor of English and Creative Writing at the State University of New York at Binghamton, and writes a monthly book review column about children's books for the Boston Globe.

Judges
Mari Evans - Mari Evans is an educator, writer, musician, and formerly Distinguished Writer and Associate Professor at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center. She has lectured and read at colleges and universities throughout the country since 1965. She has the first segment of a film project that focuses on several significant African American women writers, and a theater piece on Phylis Wheatley in progress. She was a 2001 Grammy Award nominee in the Best Historical Album notes category for her 41-page work on the Belafonte Collection The Long Road to Freedom, and in 2002 was honored by Oakland University, Rochester, MI, with a quote from her work as the single inscription at the top of a five-story Atrium in their new Education Building. Mari Evans may best be known for her work as a poet in giving us the now classic I Am a Black Woman, her volumes Nightstar and most recently A Dark and Splendid Mass. Her volume of new and selected poems Continuum, is forthcoming from Black Classic Press. Ms Evans is the author of numerous political articles and six children’s books I Look at Me, J.D., Singing Black, Jim Flying High, Corinne, and I’m Late.

Claudia Mills - Claudia Mills was born in New York City on August 21, 1954. She received her B.A. degree from Wellesley College in 1976, her M.A. degree from Princeton University in 1979, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1991. She also received an M.L.S. degree from the University of Maryland in 1988, with a concentration in children's literature. She worked as an editorial assistant at Four Winds Press (Scholastic) from 1979-1980 and as an editor at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland 1980 to 1989. Since 1991 she has taught philosophy, first as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, then as an assistant professor and now as an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has written over 25 books for children and book reviews and articles. She was married to Richard W. Wahl, a natural resources economist, in 1985. They have two children and live in Boulder, Colorado.

Jim Murphy - Jim Murphy was born in Newark, New Jersey, and earned a B.A. in English from Rutgers University. Over the years he has had such offbeat jobs as boiler repairperson, chainlink fence installer, roofer, and apartment cleaner, and has worked in a plastics factory, sold books, and been a "tin-knocker" on New York City skyscrapers, working thirty or so stories up on open steel. From 1970 to 1977 he was the managing editor for Clarion Books. Murphy has more than twenty-five books to his credit. He is a two-time winner of both the SCBWI Golden Kite Award and the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award, and earned a Newbery Honor for THE GREAT FIRE (Scholastic). His most recent title for Clarion, AN AMERICAN PLAGUE, was chosen as a National Book Award finalist, a Newbery Honor Book, the Robert F. Informational Book Award winner, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Nonfiction Award winner, and the James Madison Award winner. Jim Murphy lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with his family.

Rita Williams-Garcia - Rita Williams-Garcia is the author of five distinguished novels for young adults: No Laughter Here, Every Time a Rainbow Dies, Fast Talk on a Slow Track, Blue Tights, and Like Sisters on the Homefront. She has also published a picture book and has contributed to numerous anthologies. Williams-Garcia's works have been recognized by the Coretta Scott King Award Committee, the PEN/Norma Klein Award, the American Library Association, and Parents' Choice, among others. She is on faculty at Vermont College for the MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults program. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, Queens, NY and is the mother of two daughters.