Poetry and Fiction Judges

Diann Blakely’s first poetry collection, Hurricane Walk, appeared in 1992 and was listed as one of the year’s 10 best books by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her new volume, Farewell, My Lovelies, was released by Story Line Press in March 2000. A third manuscript, Cities of Flesh and the Dead, won the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, given for a work-in-progress by the Poetry Society of America. Her latest project is a cycle of “duets,” or call-and-response poems, with the songs of bluesman Robert Johnson. These poems have been, or will be, printed by DoubleTake, Callaloo, Oxford American, Crab Orchard Review, and other publications. Winner of two Pushcart Prizes, as well as teaching awards from the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University, Blakely has received fellowships to the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. She currently serves as a poetry editor of Antioch Review.

Tony Earley is the author of three books: Here We Are in Paradise, a collection of stories; the novel Jim the Boy; and Somehow Form a Family, a collection of personal essays. An assistant professor of English at Vanderbilt, he lives in East Nashville with his wife, Sarah.

Mark Jarman’s latest collection of poetry is Unholy Sonnets. His previous collection, Questions for Ecclesiastes, won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for 1998 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His book of essays The Secret of Poetry was published this year by Story Line Press. The University of Michigan will publish another book of his essays, Body and Soul, in its Poets on Poetry Series in 2002. He teaches at Vanderbilt University.