Meet the Judges

K-Ming Chang is a Lambda Literary Award winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, a Kundiman Fellow, and an O. Henry Prize Winner. She is the author of the novel BESTIARY (One World/Random House, 2020), which was shortlisted for the Faulkner Award and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the Otherwise Award. In 2021, her chapbook BONE HOUSE was published by Bull City Press. Her story collection GODS OF WANT (One World/Random House) won a Lambda Literary Award, and her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, German, Turkish, and other languages. Her most recent books are ORGAN MEATS (One World, 2023) and a novella titled CECILIA (Coffee House Press, 2024). In 2026, she will be making her YA debut with STRAIGHT TO THE SOURCE, a romance forthcoming from Holiday House, and her second YA project, a novel-in-verse titled GIRL GODS, will be forthcoming from Kokila (Penguin Random House) in 2027. Her next novel for adults, NEEDLEMOUTH, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster on October 20, 2026. Her writing is most frequently described as “not for everybody” and occasionally described as “for the freaks.”

Michelle Gurule (she/her) is a writer and educator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Michelle earned her M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of New Mexico in 2021. Her creative work explores the complexities of sex work, class, power and Michelle’s intersectional identity as a queer, white / Chicana woman.

Her memoir,Thank You, John, out now from Unnamed Press, is a comedy-tragedy, which follows 24-year-old, Michelle, a wanna-be writer, exasperated by poverty, bad teeth, and the poor choices of her family, through a tumultuous sugar daddy arrangement that she believes her destiny.

Her work has appeared in Slate, HuffPost Personals, Electric Lit, The Offing, Lit Hub and others. In 2021, the excerpt, “Exit Route,” won StoryQuarterly’s Nonfiction Prize, judged by T Kira Maealani Madden and was later listed in Best American Essays Notables in 2022.

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, critic, performance artist. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket, 2026) and Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), which won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are the Editor-at-Large of Mizna, and co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket, 2025) which was long-listed for the Palestine Book Award. They are a graduate of Northwestern’s Litowitz MFA+MA program, and teach at Amherst College as a Writer-in-Residence.