Judges

David Baker

David Baker

David Baker is Professor of English at Denison University, where he holds the Thomas B. Fordham Chair of Creative Writing. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, including twelve books of poetry and six books of prose. His most recent collection, Swift: New and Selected Poems (2019, W. W. Norton), prompted The New Yorker to call him the “heir to such writers as Henry David Thoreau… and Robert Frost.” His poems and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The Nation, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He has received awards and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Foundation, the Utah Arts Council, the Society of Midland Authors, and the Ohioana Library Association. He is the poetry editor of the Kenyon Review.

Matt Burgess

Matt Burgess

Matt Burgess is Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College. He is the author of the literary crime novels Dogfight, A Love Story (2011, Doubleday) and Uncle Janice (2015, Doubleday) His work has been reviewed by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Economist, Kirkus Review, Vanity Fair, Publishers Weekly, and other media outlets. Vanity Fair called Dogfight “electrifying,” and The Economist refers to Burgess as “[a] talent to watch.” Uncle Janice received starred reviews from such publications as Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal.

Sumita Chakraborty

Sumita Chakraborty

Sumita Chakraborty is Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Poetry at the University of Michigan. Her debut poetry collection, Arrow, will be released in September 2020 by Alice James Books in the U.S. and Carcanet Press in the U.K. She is currently working on her first scholarly book, which turns to poetics as a source for ethical thought and praxis in the Anthropocene. Her poems, essays, and articles have appeared in the Best American Poetry 2019, POETRY, The American Poetry Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Cultural Critique, and elsewhere. She received a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation in 2017; she was shortlisted for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2018; and she became a Kundiman Fellow in 2020. She has served as the poetry editor of AGNI Magazine and the art editor of At Length.

Melissa Cundieff

Melissa Cundieff

Melissa Cundieff is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College. She is the author of the poetry collection Darling Nova (2017, Autumn House Press) and the chapbook Futures With Your Ghost (2014, Finishing Line Press). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best of the Net, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Four Way Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and an Academic of American Poets Prize.

Andrew Grace

Andrew Grace

Andrew Grace is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. He is the author of the poetry books A Belonging Field (Salt Publishing, 2001) Shadeland (Ohio State University Press, 2008), and Sancta (Ahsahta Press, 2012). His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, The Boston Review, Poetry, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow of Poetry at Stanford University and is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize. He is an associate poetry editor of the Kenyon Review.

Michael Prior

Michael Prior

Michael Prior is Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College. He is the author of two poetry collections, Burning Province (2020, McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House) and Model Disciple (2016, Signal Editions). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Republic, POETRY, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, Ambit, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. In 2016, he was named a “Writer to Watch” by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). He has been a Hawthornden Fellow and is the recipient of awards from Matrix Magazine, The Fiddlehead, The Walrus, The New Quarterly, Magma, and more.

orchid tierney

Orchid Tierney

Orchid Tierney is an Aotearoa-New Zealand poet and Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. She is the author of a year of misreading the wildcats (2019, Operating System) and Earsay (2016, TrollThread), and chapbooks ocean plastic (2020, BlazeVOX), blue doors (2018, Belladonna* Press), Gallipoli Diaries (GaussPDF 2017), the world in small parts (2012, Dancing Girl Press), and Brachiation (2012, Gumtree). Other poems, reviews, and scholarship have appeared in Jacket2, Journal of Modern Literature, and Western Humanities Review, among others. She is a consulting editor for the Kenyon Review.