2022 Contest Judges

Dr. Anne Meek Poetry Prize Judge

Dr. Lisa Roney

Lisa is the author of the memoir Sweet Invisible Body, the poetry chapbook The Best Possible Bad Luck, and the craft book Serious Daring: Creative Writing in Four Genres. Her short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry has been published by Harper’sSycamore Review, Red Rock ReviewstorySouthNuméro CinqSaw PalmSo to SpeakRuminate, The Lark, Panhandler Magazine, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and other journals and collections. She is associate professor of English at the University of Central Florida, where she served as editor-in-chief of The Florida Review and Aquifer: The Florida Review Online from 2015 to 2020. She is currently at work on a hybrid poetry/nonfiction manuscript about the ways in which family history influence the present.

Fiction Judge

Bonnie ZoBell

Bonnie ZoBell’s new linked collection What Happened Here, a novella and stories, centered on the site PSA Flight 182 crashed in the North Park area of San Diego, was published in May 2014 by Press 53. Her chapbook, The Whack-Job Girls was released by Monkey Puzzle Press in March 2013.

She has received an NEA fellowship in fiction, a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, and first place in the Capricorn Novel Award from the the Writer’s Voice of NYC. She was selected for mentorships with Dorothy Allison and Jon Raymond at the Tin House Writers Conference, and her work has won a place on Wigleaf‘s Top 50, a story published by Storyglossia was named as a notable story in storySouth’s Million Writers Award, and the Los Angeles Review nominated one of her stories for a Pushcart Award. She has been a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Contest and the Nelson Algren Literary Award at the Chicago Tribune.

Bonnie’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including The PotomacNight Train, Blue Fifth ReviewNew Plains ReviewPANK, and The Connotation Press. She has received fellowships at numerous residencies, such as Yaddo, MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Wurlitzer, and Villa Montalvo, and attended such conferences as the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Tin House Summer Workshop, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. After receiving an MFA from Columbia on fellowship, she has been teaching at San Diego Mesa College where she is a Creative Writing Coordinator. Currently she is working on a novel. She lives in a casita in San Diego with her husband, two dogs, two cats, and quite a few succulents.

Nonfiction Judge

Erin Chandler

Erin Chandler’s memoir, June Bug Versus Hurricane was published by Rabbit House Press in 2017, her book of essays Cinderella Sweeping Up came out in 2019.

Chandler holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Spalding University and a Masters in Theatre from the University of Kentucky. She has twenty years of experience in the Entertainment Industry working as an actress, playwright, and producer in Los Angeles. Erin currently teaches memoir, playwrighting and screenwriting for the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky and is working on her new nonfiction book, Bluegrass Son.