We are honored to have these literary icons as guest judges to help us select up our winner and up to 20 finalists!
David Drury
David Drury is a short fiction writer, writing coach and book editor whose stories have been published in more than 50 publications, including Best American Nonrequired Reading.
He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Mateo Askaripour
Mateo Askaripour wants people to feel seen. His first novel, Black Buck, takes on racism in corporate America with humor and wit. It was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today show book club pick.
Askaripour was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 rising stars poised to make waves” and was named as a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” prize.
This Great Hemisphere is his second novel.
He lives in Brooklyn.
Paco de Leon
©Bryan Dale
Paco de Leon is the author and illustrator of Finance for the People, and host of the podcast, Weird Finance.
She is the founder of The Hell Yeah Group, a financial firm dedicated to inspiring creatives to engage with their personal and business finances and Hell Yeah, Bookkeeping, a bookkeeping agency for creative businesses.
Her career experiences in small business consulting, financial planning, and wealth management have informed her financial philosophies.
She is a TED speaker and her work has been published or featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg, PBS, TIME, Good Morning America on other publications, and on NPR. She lives in Los Angeles with her wife.
Bourree Lam
Bourree Lam was the Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal’s Personal Finance section. She is the author of The New Rules of Money: A Playbook for Planning Your Financial Future. She’s led the coverage of personal finance topics with an emphasis on accessibility at WSJ, Refinery29, and The Atlantic.
Her journalism has won awards and industry recognition from the Online News Association, the Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page Awards, the Maynard Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation.
She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.
Daniel Lefferts
©Nina Subin
Daniel Lefferts is the author of the novel Ways and Means (Abrams, 2024).
His work has appeared in the Paris Review, GQ, the Baffler, and elsewhere.