2024 Prose Contest Judges
Jeffrey Ann Goudie is an award-winning freelance writer and book critic. Her book reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Kansas City Star, the New York Times Book Review and the Women’s Review of Books. A former newspaper columnist for the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Topeka Metro News, she has written opinion pieces for the Kansas Reflector and the Huffington Post. Her cover story about Edythe Squier Draper, a Southeast Kansas short story writer, was a cover story in the Little Balkans Review and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has written many profiles of notable Topekans for Topeka Magazine. She is a long-time member of the National Book Critics Circle and the National Federation of Press Women. Raised in Midland, Texas, she considers herself a Kansan by choice. She is married to writer Thomas Fox Averill. They have two grown children.
Lindsay H. Metcalf is a former journalist who writes award-winning nonfiction and poetry for young people. She is a co-editor of and contributor to several young activist poetry anthologies, including No Voice Too Small, which won the International Literacy Association’s 2021 Social Justice Award, and No World Too Big, which won the 2024 Green Earth Book Award. Two of her picture books were named Junior Library Guild selections: Outdoor Farm, Indoor Farm and Farmers Unite! Planting a Protest for Fair Prices, a Kansas Notable Book and Bank Street Best Book of 2020. Her 2020 debut, the picture book biography Beatrix Potter, Scientist, won the Friends of American Writers Young People’s Literature Award. Lindsay began her writing career as a reporter, editor, and columnist for The Kansas City Star and other news outlets. She lives in Concordia, Kansas, with her husband, two sons, and a geriatric cat and a mischievous puppy. Learn more at lindsayhmetcalf.com and @lindsayhmetcalf on social media.
Susan Jackson Rodgers is the author of the novel This Must Be the Place (2017), as well as two story collections: The Trouble with You Is and Ex-Boyfriend on Aisle 6. Her stories and essays have appeared in journals such as New England Review, Colorado Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, River Teeth, and Brevity. She is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize Special Mentions and past winner of the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. Originally from Connecticut and New York City, Susan taught creative writing at Kansas State University for 15 years. Currently she is a professor of creative writing and literature at Oregon State University. She has served as the director of the OSU MFA program and on the Board of Directors for the Associated Writers and Writing Programs. Susan has been the associate dean of the OSU Honors College since 2020.
Cathleen Bascom—Literary Bishop
After a Creative Writing B.A., I earned an M.A. in Modern English Literature at Exeter University in England, where my focus was the literary devices used by C.S. Lewis and G.K Chesterton to portray religious experience. I also became fascinated with Henry James’ multivalent use of pronouns. However, while skiing in the Alps on winter holiday, I came to peace with my calling to the Episcopal priesthood and went home to America. I served in parish ministry for decades.
I returned to literary studies and to writing, earning an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Environment through Iowa State University’s cutting-edge cross-disciplinary program. I also served as Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Waldorf University teaching biblical literature as well as honors and English courses in which prairie restoration, plains writers, and George Harrison of Beatles-fame were given attention. In 2018, I was honored as Faculty of the Year.
I was ordained and consecrated as the 10th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas early in 2019 at Grace Cathedral, Topeka. The chief consecrator was then Presiding Bishop Michael Curry (of Royal Wedding fame.)
As Bishop in Kansas, creation care and prairie preservation and restoration remain important priorities. We have transformed three acres of diocesan lawn in downtown Topeka (just blocks west of the State Capitol) into public gardens that include a teaching prairie, culinary food garden, outdoor chapel, and prayer spaces. A labyrinth is coming!
I am married to Tim Bascom, author of five books and literary companion. We have two adult sons, Conrad and Luke. I like to garden, cross country ski, travel, and enjoy the blessings of family and friends.
Becky Mandelbaum is the author of the novel The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals and the story collection Bad Kansas. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The New Yorker, One Story, The Sun, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. She has received support from Hedgebrook, Writing by Writers, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Lighthouse Works, and the Washington Arts Commission. Originally from Kansas, she now lives in Bellingham, Washington.
Judy Bauer earned an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Kansas and holds a master’s in counseling from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She worked as a counselor, teacher and social worker. She won the 2009 Langston Hughes Award for her novel in progress and was a Pushcart Nominee for the short story “Click” published in Coal City Review 24:2007. Her short-short “Before You Understand—After Diane Williams” was published in Coal City Review 21:2006. Coal City Review published her short story “Before With Other Men If I Had Tried” in the 30:2012 issue. Her poems “Matter” and “High Anxiety” will be published in October 2024 in Sea Change, Island Writers Network 25th Anniversary Anthology, Hilton Head, South Carolina. Connect with Judy at www.judybauerwrites.com
Marcia Peck’s debut novel, Water Music: A Cape Cod Story, runner-up for the Faulkner Wisdom Award for an unpublished novel, was released in 2023 by Sea Crow Press.
Marcia’s award-winning fiction has appeared in New Millenium Writings, Chautauqua Journal, Gemini Magazine, Glimmer Train, 26 Minnesota Writers (Nodine Press), Tribute to Orpheus 2 (Kearney Books), three volumes of Open to Interpretation: Fading Light (Taylor and O’Neill), A Sense of Place: Cape Women Writers, among others. Her flash fiction, “Long Distance,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Essays have appeared in Showcase: the Magazine of the Minnesota Orchestra, Strad Magazine, Strings Magazine, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Musical America.
Before joining the cello section of the Minnesota Orchestra, Marcia studied cello at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and Schumann Konservatorium in Düsseldorf. Her life in music has inspired her to look for the rhythms and sounds of music echoed in language.
Marcia’s current novel-in-progress, The Unattended Moment, was a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Novel-in-Progress award.
Catherine Trieschmann's plays include CROOKED (New York Times Critic’s Pick), HOW THE WORLD BEGAN (Four stars, The London Times), HOT GEORGIA SUNDAY (Four stars, Chicago Time Out), THE MOST DESERVING, HOLY LAUGHTER, and ONE HOUSE OVER. They have been produced Off-Broadway at the Women’s Project Theater, in London at the Bush Theater and with Out-of-Joint at the Arcola Theatre, South Coast Repertory, the Denver Theater Center for Performing Arts, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Geva Theatre Center, Florida Stage, and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, among others. She has received commissions from South Coast Repertory, Manhattan Theater Club, Denver Center for Performing Arts, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Geva Theatre Center and the William Inge Theatre Festival. She’s the recipient of the Weissberger Award, the Otis Guernsey New Voices Award from the Willian Inge Playwriting Festival and a two-time Edgerton New Play awardee. Her plays are published by Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing and Methuen. Ms. Trieschmann has also served as a teaching artist, instructing students in playwriting, acting and improv for Arena Stage, the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and at universities around the country. She holds an MFA from the University of Georgia and lives in a small town in Western Kansas.
Raylene Hinz-Penner, lifetime Kansan, grew up in the southwest corner near Liberal on a dairy farm. Retired from a career teaching creative writing and American literature at Bethel College in North Newton and Washburn University in Topeka, she writes about place and how it shapes its inhabitants. In 2007 she published Searching for Sacred Ground: the Story of Peace Chief Lawrence Hart (Mennonite); in 2022 she published a memoir featuring place, East of Liberal: Notes on the Land. Her current writing is in support of educating herself and her community on how farming settlement in Kansas dislocated Native peoples. She lives in North Newton.
2024 Poetry Contest Judges
David Cazden was the poetry editor for the magazine, Miller's Pond, for five years. He is the author of three collections of poetry, Moving Picture (Word Press, 2005), The Lost Animals (Sundress Publications, 2012) and forthcoming, Kentucky Pathways (Bainbridge Island Press, 2024). David's poetry has appeared widely in magazines such as Passages North, Nimrod, Verse Daily, The Connecticut Review, The New Republic, Crab Creek Review, Fugue Journal, The Shore and elsewhere. He was the recipient of an Al Smith Fellowship for Poetry from the Kentucky Arts Council and he lives in Danville, Kentucky. Website: https://www.davidcazden.net/
Rebecca Aronson is the author of three books of poetry: Anchor, winner of the Eric Hoffer award for poetry and first place poetry prize from the Philosophical Society of Texas; Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom, winner of the Orison Books poetry prize; and Creature, Creature. She has been a recipient of a Yetzirah fellowship, a Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, the Loft’s Speakeasy Poetry Prize, and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to Sewanee. She has work appearing recently or soon in The Taos Journal of Poetry, In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy, Crosswinds, The Laurel Review, and others. She is host of Bad Mouth, a series of words and music. She lives in Albuquerque with her husband, teenage son, and a very demanding cat.
Laura Donnelly is the author of Midwest Gothic, selected by Maggie Smith as the winner of the Richard Snyder Prize and published by Ashland Poetry Press in fall 2020. Midwest Gothic was also a finalist for the Berkshire Prize and the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award. Donnelly’s first book of poetry, Watershed, won the 2013 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Rhino, Passages North, Mississippi Review and in the online publications of Missouri Review, Harvard Review, Poets.org and elsewhere. Her book reviews appear in Kenyon Review Online and Terrain, and she co-authors a column on nature and the arts for the Sterling Nature Center in Upstate New York. Originally from Michigan, Donnelly received an MFA from Purdue University and a PhD from Western Michigan University. Her work has been supported by fellowships and scholarships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is currently the Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing at SUNY Oswego and lives in Upstate New York with her husband, Ben, and a cat named Sue. You can find her online at www.laurakdonnelly.com.
Alexis Sears is the author of Out of Order, winner of the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and the Poetry by the Sea Book Award: Best Book of 2022. Her work appears in Best American Poetry, Poet Lore, Cortland Review, Cimarron Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University. Editor-at-Large of the Northwest Review and Contributing Editor of Literary Matters, she lives in Los Angeles.
Steve Brisendine lives, works and remains unbeaten against The New York Times crossword in Mission, KS. He is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently full of old books and silence(Alien Buddha Press, 2024) and Behind the Wall Cloud of Sleep (Spartan Press, 2024). His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, I-70 Review, Flint Hills Review and other publications and compilations. He has no degrees, one tattoo and a deep and unironic fondness for strip-mall Chinese restaurants. In his spare time, he tries to make himself seem far more interesting than he actually is.
Annie Woodford is the author of Bootleg (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2019) and Where You Come from Is Gone (Mercer UP, 2022), recipient of the 2022 Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. Her micro-chapbook, When God Was a Child, was published by Bull City Press in 2023. Her work has been published most recently in Appalachian Journal. Originally from Henry County, Virginia, she now lives in Deep Gap, North Carolina.
Katherine Hoerth is author of five poetry collections, including Flare Stacks in Full Bloom (Texas Review Press, 2022). Her work has been published in Literary Imagination (Oxford University Press), Valparaiso Review, and Southwestern American Literature. She is an associate professor at Lamar University and director of Lamar University Literary Press. Her forthcoming book, Pandora’s Prairie, will be published by Cornerstone Press in 2025.