Creative Writing: 2007-2008 Competition Judges
Stephen Murabito
poetry
Stephen Murabito is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittburgh’s Greensburg campus. His short stories have appeared in such places as North American Review, Antietam Review, Brooklyn Review, Voices in Italian Americana, and Paper Street. He has been an NEA Fellow in Poetry, and his poems have appeared in such places as Minnesota Review, Mississippi Review, Poet Lore, Beloit Poetry Journal, and 5AM. His chapbook, A Little Dinner Music, was published by Parallel Press in 2004. Star Cloud Press has published the first two volumes of his “Oswego Trilogy”—his Oswego Fugues in 2005, and his Communion of Asiago in 2006. In 2008, Star Cloud will bring out the work that completes this trilogy, Lowering the Body: The West Eighth Sequence. His poetry is anthologized in Encore: More of Parallel Press Poets (2006), and Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry (2006). He is also the author/editor of the composition textbook, Connections, Contexts, and Possibilities (2001).
Joe Taylor
fiction
Joe Taylor directs the Livingson Press at the University of West Alabama. He has three published collections of stories: Oldcat & Ms. Puss; A Book of Days for You and Me; The World’s Thinnest Fat Man; and Some Heroes, Some Heroines, Some Others. He also has edited several anthologies of stories, notably the Tartt Series.
Jill Breckenridge
essay
Jill Breckenridge won The Bluestem Award, judged by William Stafford, for her book of personal poems, How To Be Lucky. He sequence of poetry and prose about the Civil Way period, Civil Blood, published by Milkweed Editions, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and the American Library Association’s Notable Books of the Year. Jill’s awards include the Lift-McKnight Writers’ Awards in both creative prose and poetry, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, and two State Arts Board grants. She recently completed another collection of poems, The Gravity of Flesh, and a memoir, Miss Priss and the Con Man. Jill is working on another collection of poems, What the Bird Knows.
Dwayne Hartford
one-act play/scripts
Dwayne Hartford is a playwright, actor and director living in Phoenix. He is in his 16th season with Childsplay as an associate artist. His play, Eric and Elliot, was named the 2005 Distinguished Play by the American Alliance of Theatre and Education. The play is published by Dramatic Publishing, along with Dwayne’s The Imaginators. This season Childsplay has commissioned and will produce two plays from Dwayne, a new adaptation of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, and A Little Bit of Water, a co-commission with Arizona Audubon. A Tale of Two Cities was workshopped at NYU’s New Plays for Young Audiences program at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City this past June. Dwayne is originally from Maine and received his BFA from Boston Conservatory. He did graduate work in directing at Boston University.
