Saturday, October 10, 2009

The Story Prize Judges: Meet A.M. Homes, Carolyn Kellogg, and Bill Kelly

This year's judges for The Story Prize are author A.M. Homes, critic/blogger Carolyn Kellogg, and librarian Bill Kelly. Our aim is to have a diverse group that represents different constituencies that support short fiction. One of the judges is always a writer (who has published short fiction). We alternate every other year between a bookseller and a librarian. And the third judge could be an editor, bookseller, blogger, critic, etc. Sometimes our judges wear more than one hat.

This procedural issue sometimes confuses people: The judges for The Story Prize do not choose the finalists; Julie Lindsay (the founder of The Story Prize) and I do that in early January. The judges read those three books and vote for their top choices.

In the week ahead, I'll post about each of our judges individually. We're thrilled to have them on board and believe they'll serve the prize well--as all our past judges have.

Previous judges have been:
2008/09: Editor and author Daniel Menaker, author and editor Hannah Tinti, and bookseller Rick Simonson.
2007/8: Author/critic David Gates, librarian Patricia Groh, editor Megan O'Rourke
2006/7: Author Edwidge Danticat, blogger Ron Hogan, bookseller Mitchell Kaplan
2005/6: Author Andrea Barrett, librarian Nancy Pearl, critic James Wood
2004/5: Author Dan Chaon, bookseller Ann Christophersen, editor Brigid Hughes