RBWG 2010 Contest Judges

Fiction

The child of a general surgeon hailing from Cebu City, Philippines and a nurse hailing from Westminster, Maryland, Marisa de los Santos grew up in Baltimore and Northern Virginia.  Inspired by her heroes Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, Marisa read extensively as a child. Marisa earned a degree in English from the University of Virginia, as well as an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D in English and Creative Writing from the University of Houston.           

Marisa found early literary success with the publication of her poetry collection, From The Bones Out and and with the novels Love Walked In and Belong to Me. She is currently working on a third novel Falling Together.

She lives with her husband, children's book author David Teague, and their two children, Charles and Annabel, in Wilmington, Delaware.

For more on Marisa, click on www.marisadelossantos.com.

Nonfiction

McKay Jenkins has been writing about people and the natural world for 25 years. He is the author of What’s Gotten Into Us: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World which chronicles his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals do to our bodies and the environment. Other books include Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness and Murder in the Arctic Barren Lands, The Last Ridge: The Epic Story of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, the Assault on Hitler’s Europe, The White Death: Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche Zone, and The South in Black and White: Race, Sex, and Literature in the 1940s.

Jenkins is the editor of The Peter Matthiessen Reader. He holds degrees from Amherst, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and Princeton, where he received a PhD in English. Jenkins is currently the Cornelius Tilghman Professor of English and Director of Journalism at the University of Delaware. He lives in Baltimore with his family. For more on McKay, click on www.mckayjenkins.com/ .

Poetry

Jeanne Murray Walker’s most recent book of poetry is New Tracks, Night Falling (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009).   Her poems and essays have appeared in many periodicals, including Poetry, The Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and Best American Poetry.  

Among her awards are an NEA Fellowship, eight Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships, The Prairie-Schooner Glenna Luschei Prize, and a Pew Fellowship in The Arts.  Professor of English at The University of Delaware, where she heads the creative writing program, she is also a mentor in the Seattle Pacific University Low Residency MFA Program and a frequent speaker at poetry festivals, conventions, churches, and universities. 

Her website is www.JeanneMurrayWalker.com