Meet the judges

Dec. 22—FICTION — Kim Parko is the author of The Grotesque Child (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2016) — a co-winner of the Tarpaulin Sky Press Book Prize — and Cure All (Caketrain Press, 2010), as well as the winner of the 2018 Boston Review poetry prize. She is a professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

NONFICTION: James McGrath Morris is an award- winning and New York Times-bestselling biographer. He is the author of five biographies and three works of narrative nonfiction. He is perhaps best known for Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, The First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad, 2017), which won a Hooks National Book Award, and Pulitzer: A Life in Print, Politics, and Power (Harper Perennial, 2011), selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the five best books on an American mogul. His most recent work is Tony Hillerman: A Life (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021), which was a finalist for an Edgar. He co-founded the Biographers International Organization and serves as executive director of New Mexico Writers.

POETRY: Hakim Bellamy is the inaugural poet laureate of Albuquerque (2012-2014), a National Poetry Slam champion, and past creative writing chair at New Mexico School for the Arts. His poetry has been published on the Albuquerque Convention Center, on the outside of a library, in inner-city buses, and in numerous anthologies across the globe. His first book, Swear (West End Press/UNM Press, 2013), won the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing from the Working-Class Studies Association. He facilitates youth writing workshops for schools, jails, churches, prisons, and community organizations in New Mexico and beyond. Bellamy has served as a television host for New Mexico PBS's ¡COLORES! program and is pursuing a law degree at UNM.

GRAND PRIZE: Stephen P. Hull is professor of practice and director of the University of New Mexico Press, New Mexico's largest publisher of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and scholarly books. His career in book publishing has included stints with Little, Brown & Co., Simon & Schuster, indie presses, and university presses. From 2001 to 2009, he owned and ran Justin, Charles & Co., an indie press in Boston publishing nonfiction as well as literary and mystery/crime fiction. He recently published stories with the Watershed Review and ABQ inPrint, and is working on a "high desert noir" set in Santa Fe.