About the Jury
Alan Ziegler is a professor of writing and chair of the School of the Arts Writing Division at Columbia University. His many honors include winning four PEN-NEA Syndicated Fiction Awards and the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. His books include So Much to Do, The Green Grass of Flatbush, The Writing Workshop, and the recently released The Swan Song of Vaudeville; his works have appeared in the New Yorker and Paris Review.
Nancy Schwalb is the founder of the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop and the Youth Poetry Slam League. She has an M.F.A. in creative writing from George Mason University and has been teaching creative writing at Hart Middle School since 1995. Her work has been published in the GW Review, the Washington City Paper, Vanity Fair, Barragua, and Argus. She has served as a teaching fellow for the Kennedy Center and is a three-time Larry Neal Award winner.
Jamila Wade is a writer-in-residence for the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop and also a certified English teacher who taught high school students in Boston for three years. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Spelman College and holds a Masters of Education from Harvard University. She is an artist with a theatrical background, as well as a writer who's work has been published in the Roxbury Literary Journal and bum rush the page: a def poetry jam.