2010 Competition Judges

Novel, Stuart O'Nan

O'Nan's first book, and only collection of short stories, In the Walled City, was awarded the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. The same year, he was able to find a publisher for his second book, and first novel, Snow Angels based on the story "Finding Amy" from In the Walled City when the manuscript earned him the first Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize for the Novel. In 2007 Snow Angels was adapted for a film of the same title, directed by David Gordon Green, who also wrote the screenplay, and starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. In 1995 he and his family moved to Avon, Connecticut. He was a writer-in-residence and taught creative writing at Trinity College in nearby Hartford until 1997. The research he did for his novel The Names of the Dead led to the creation of a class that studied Vietnam War memoirs as a form of literature, which he also initially taught. In 1996, Granta named him one of America's Best Young Novelists.

Novella, Julia Glass

Her debut novel, Three Junes, won the National Book Award in 2002. Three Junes is three linked novellas, including Collies, which won the Faulkner Society's Gold Medal for Best Novella in 2000. Glass followed this up with a second novel, The Whole World Over, in 2006, which was also set in the Bank Street, Greenwich Village universe and featured several characters from Three Junes. She just published a new book, her third, I See You Everywhere. Glass grew up in Lincoln, MA, and graduated from Yale in 1978, prior to attending Concord Academy. Intending to become a painter, she moved to New York City, where she lived for many years, painting in a small studio in Brooklyn, NY and supporting herself as a free-lance editor and copy editor (Glass worked for several years in the copy department of Cosmopolitan magazine). She lives in Marblehead, MA with her partner, photographer Dennis Cowley, and their two children, and works as a freelance journalist and editor.

Novel in Progress, Michael Murphy

In book publishing for 28 years, his first 13 years were with Random House, where he was a Vice President. Later, he ran William Morrow as their Publisher.  In September, 2007, he formed his own agency, Max & Co. A Literary Agency & Social Club. One of his authors, who attended Words & Music, 2008 is New York Times best selling Tony O'Neill, who has been tabbed by Esquire magazine as the IT writer of the current decade, joining their other choices, Jack Kerouac (1960s), Hunter S Thompson (1970s), Bret Easton Ellis (1980s), and Irvine Welsh (1990s).  His forthcoming novel, Sick City, branches into the Noir category and has been described as "Unmistakably Tony O'Neill, but as though he's been snorting high grade Jim Thompson & mainlining Elmore Leonard."  Two of his authors attending this year are New Orleans residents, Andrea Young and Barb Johnson. Barb was Glimmer Train's Best New Voice 2007, and won the Washington Square competition the same year. She was recipient of A Room of Her Own grant for 2009. Her first book, More of This World or Maybe Another was just published by HarperCollins. Andy Young is an accomplished poet who is now writing both fiction and non-fiction prose.

Short Story, Tom Franklin

This critically acclaimed author of Poachers, a collection of short fiction which won the Edgar Allen Poe Award, and two novels, Smonk and Hell at the Breech was born in the small southern town of Dickinson, AL, and later moved with his family to nearby Mobile, and attended the University of South Alabama there, earning his BA in English. Franklin earned his MFA in fiction at the University of Arkansas in 1998 and then returned to the University of South Alabama to teach. Shortly after he was awarded the Phillip Roth Residency in Creative Writing at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. Subsequently he was writer in residence at Knox College and the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss, instructing both undergraduate and graduate students in fiction writing course. Tom and his wife, the widely acclaimed poet Beth Ann Fennelly live in Oxford, MS where she is a member of the English Department. Winner of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, Franklin taught at Sewannee during the academic year 2002-2003. His short stories and essays have been published in such magazines as The Chattahoochee Review, Brightleaf, The Nebraska Review, The Texas Review, Quarterly West, and Smoke Magazine. His stories are included in anthologies such as New Stories from the South; The Year's Best, 1999; Best American Mystery Stories, 1999 and 2000; and Best Mystery Stories of the Century.

Essay, Beth Anne Fenelly

Born on May 21, 1971, in New Jersey, Ms. Fennelly grew up in Lake Forest, IL.  She obtained her B.A. magna cum laude in 1993 from the University of Notre Dame. After graduation, Fennelly taught English in a coal mining village on the Czech/Polish border.  When she returned to the States, she earned the M.F.A. degree in poetry from the University of Arkansas.  She then received the 1999 Diane Middlebrook Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin.  She was also the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant.  She became an Assistant Professor of English and taught poetry at Knox College in Galesburg, Il.  Her chapbook  A Different Kind of Hunger, published by the Texas Review Press, won the 1997 Texas Review Breakthrough Award.  Her poems have been anthologized in Poets of  the New Century, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, The Best  American Poetry 1996,  The Pushcart Prize 2001 and others.   Fennelly's book of poems, Open House,  has won numerous awards, including the  2001 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry for a First Book.  Her next  book, Tender Hooks, was followed by Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother and in Unmentionables: Poems Company. Most recently, Ms. Fennelly has been working in non-fiction and has had a number of highly successful memoirs and essays published.

Poetry, Nicole Cooley

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans. In 2010, she will publish two books of poetry, Breach, to be published by LSU Press in April 2010, which focuses on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and Milk Dress, co-winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award, to appear with Alice James Books in November. She has published two other books of poems and a novel. She has been awarded the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a "Discovery"/Nation Award, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. She directs the new MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College-City University of New York.

The Judge for Short Story by a High School Student will be announced shortly. All of the judges also will appear as members of the faculty for Words & Music, 2010.