The Judges

Dorothy Barnett was a James A. Michener Fellow in fiction and is currently the chair of the Creative Writing Department at Austin Community College. She founded Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and The Rio Review: Literary & Arts Journal and is the director of the Balcones Poetry Prize. She won third place in the first Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest, which took place in 1992.

Scott Blackwood's 2001 story collection, In the Shadow of Our House (SMU Press), was praised by The New York Times Book Review and named one of the best Texas books of the year by the San Antonio Express-News. His fiction has appeared most recently in the Boston Review. Blackwood runs the Undergraduate Writing Center at the University of Texas and teaches fiction writing in UT's Extension Program. One of his first stories was an honorable mention in the 1992 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest. He still claims he was robbed and carries with him a deep and abiding grudge.

Jessa Crispin is the editor of Bookslut.com.

Dan Dietz is a playwright living in Austin. His work has been seen in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin, and elsewhere. His play Trash Anthem received the 2003 Heideman Award and will be produced by the Actors Theatre of Louisville in this year's Humana Festival. Dietz is a resident company member of Salvage Vanguard Theater and the artistic director of Austin Script Works.

Neal Pollack is the author of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature and Beneath the Axis of Evil, which has just been published by Austin's So New Media Books. His novel about the history of rock & roll, Never Mind the Pollacks, will be published by HarperCollins this fall. Look for his band, the Neal Pollack Invasion, at South by Southwest.