Jerah Chadwick

Poetry, Grades 10-12

Jerah Chadwick is a 23-year resident of Unalaska, where he originally went to raise goats and write. He now teaches for and runs the Aleutian/Pribilof Regional Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has participated for the past seven years as an assistant bentwood hat-making teacher at Camp Qungaayux in Unalaska. His work has been published in the United States, Canada and the Republic of Ireland. He has published chapbooks with State Street and Seal presses, and, in 1999, his first full-length collection, “Story Hunger,” was released by Salmon Publishing of Ireland, which will issue a second edition soon. In 1983, he guest-edited “Contemporary Art and Writing of the Aleutian Islands.” Chadwick is a past recipient of an Alaska State Council on the Arts Writing Fellowship and was a graduate resource fellow at UAF. Currently, he is working on a new collection, “Village Beneath the Pavement.” In October 2004, the Alaska State Council on the Arts named him Alaska State Writer Laureate. He is on the faculty for this year’s Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, scheduled for June 9-13.

Julia Childs

Fiction, Grades K-3

Julia Childs, works in the marketing department at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in Lubbock, Texas. She writes: “My name really is Julia Childs, and, yes, I can cook. But these days I limit my gourmet cooking to special events and holidays. I first went to work for a weekly newspaper at the age of 9. I was asked to help gather the news in my community, Ragtown, a small farming community in West Texas. It was my job to call all the neighbors and find out who visited, who had a birthday or anniversary, and where and when the next ice cream supper would be scheduled. I would then send my news to Mrs. Cornish at the paper. She was so nice and made me feel so special, she even paid me a whopping $10 a week along with a byline. My dream was to grown up and work for a newspaper, but mostly I wanted to be like Mrs. Cornish and work with kids.

“I am very lucky, I have my ‘dream job’ and I get to work with kids everyday. The A-J has a program called ‘Make Kids Count’ designed to accentuate the accomplishments and contributions of children in our community while providing them with an assortment of educational and family-oriented activities and experiences.

“I continue to live on the family farm close to Ragtown and Grassland, and, no, it’s not on the map. I enjoy reading and gardening. My grandmothers taught me to quilt so most of my spare time is spent quilting and collecting quilts. I have three sons and three grandchildren. If you have the chance to visit Texas, come by the farm and I will report your visit to the newspaper.”

Marjorie Kowalski Cole

Poetry, Open/Adult Category

Marjorie Kowalski Cole has a master’s degree in English from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a master’s in library science from the University of Washington. She has been publishing short stories and poetry in literary journals since the mid-1980s, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Kalliope, Chattahoochee Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Grain, Room of One’s Own, Cream City Review and others. Her essays have appeared in Poets and Writers Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, National Catholic Reporter, American Poetry Review and Alaska newspapers. In 2004, her first novel, “Correcting the Landscape,” received the Bellwether Award, endowed by Barbara Kingsolver to support a literature of social responsibility and the imagination of humane possibilities. She has two sons and lives in Ester with her husband. She is on the faculty for this year’s Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, scheduled for June 9-13.

Mary Hicks

Poetry, Grades 4-6

Mary (“Mo”) Hicks, Alaska poet, humorist and playwright, has taught writing at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau as an adjunct professor since the early 1990s, spent eight years as an editor at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and currently is a technical writer for NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Region.

Hicks’ poetry ties together remote peoples and landscapes from wild horses in boxed canyons of eastern Washington to the Inupiat village of Barrow, from war-torn Sarajevo to a Russia caught between governments. Hicks pulls on her experiences from these worldscapes and more to reconnect readers to each other — and to themselves. She recently was honored in Washington, D. C., at an international poetry contest for her poem “Ice Truth” about climate changes she witnessed in the Arctic. When she isn’t writing poems and plays, or roasting Alaska’s governors and senators with one of the oldest comedy troupes in the state, the 20th Century Bluescast, she judges science fairs and poetry contests. She holds Homer high on her list as a favorite getaway to clarity and calm.

Rexanna Keller Lester

Longtime journalist Rexanna Keller Lester is currently a columnist for the Savannah Morning News in Savannah, Ga., where she also served as executive editor and managing editor for many years. Under her leadership, the Savannah Morning News received several prestigious awards. In 2004, 2003, 2001, 2000 and 1998, the newspaper was awarded first in general excellence by the Georgia Press Association. In 2002, the newspaper received the Georgia Press Association Freedom of Information Award for a series about the U.S. drug war in the Bahamas and the military helicopter joyride that killed two pilots’ wives. The newspaper also received the 2002 Batten Award, the nation’s highest honor in community journalism, for a series on improving public education and the 2000 Batten Award for Civic Journalism for a series on aging. It was awarded the 2000 American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Jesse Laventhol Prize for deadline trial reporting. In 1999 and 1995, the newspaper received the Hammett Awards for “ethical and courageous journalism that inspires the public to take action” on race relations and the resegregation of the public schools. The newspaper received the 2000 Southern Journalism Award for reporting on prison health care. Lester served as a Pulitzer judge for national reporting in 1997 and commentary in 1996 and as an international judge for Society of News Design World’s Best Designed Newspapers 2002. She currently serves on the board of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and is former president of the Georgia AP News Council.

Rosanne V. Pagano

Fiction, Grades 7-9

Writer, editor and educator Rosanne V. Pagano was born and raised in Connecticut and moved to Alaska in 1985. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley and has written for magazines and newspapers in California, Utah, New Mexico and Alaska. She contributes regularly to Alaska magazine and the Anchorage Daily News in addition to freelancing for The Associated Press. In 2003, a personal essay, “True Alaska Woman,” was anthologized in “Alaska Women Write,” published by Epicenter Press. A former journalism professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, Pagano joined the writing program at Alaska Pacific University in 2005 as adjunct faculty. Pagano is a member of the Alaska Council of Teachers of English. In 2005, she was selected by the Alaska State Council on the Arts for inclusion on its roster of Artists in Schools for literary arts. As an Associated Press staff writer from 1990 to 1998, Pagano traveled Alaska from Juneau to Adak Island on assignment. Highlights include being in Nome at the finish line of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, standing on the rim of an active volcano while scientists sent a research robot into the Mount Spurr crater, and reporting from the Brooks Range on an archaeological dig. In 1989, Pagano reported on the Exxon Valdez oil spill from Valdez for the Alaska Public Radio Network and National Public Radio. Her journalism for the AP on the spill’s aftermath appeared in national and international media outlets. A board member of the Anchorage Youth Symphony, Pagano is a longtime volunteer in the Anchorage public schools and has twice been named a volunteer of the year.

Sherry Simpson

Nonfiction, 10-12

Sherry Simpson teaches creative nonfiction in the master’s of fine arts program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her essay collection, “The Way Winter Comes,” won the Chinook Literary Prize from Sasquatch Books. She also contributed the essays for a photographic book, Glacier Bay National Park, which won the national Benjamin Franklin Award in the travel/essay category. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous journals, periodicals and anthologies, including Creative Nonfiction, Pilgrimage, Alaska Quarterly Review, Going Alone, Nature: Great Writers on the Great Outdoors, the American Nature Writing series, and In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction. Her book on relationships between bears and people is forthcoming from the University Press of Kansas. She is on the faculty for this year’s Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, scheduled for June 9-13.

Craig M. Stinson

It’s possible Craig Stinson dwells in the Mongolian desert armed only with a rusty shiv, but not probable. More likely, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter, eeking out a meager living as a freelance writer/producer. Currently, he is writing and producing television spots for the ABC Family cable network, but has also written in various forms for the likes of Fox, Warner Brothers and the always radiant Tyra Banks.

Kathleen Tarr

Kathleen Tarr is a freelance writer who lives and works in Anchorage. She holds a master of fine arts degree in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh where she also taught writing for three years. For five years, she served as director of the Kenai Visitors & Cultural Center and founded the Central Peninsula Writer’s Night, an annual community event held in Kenai.