2024 MCYPL Judge Michelle Taransky

Michelle Taransky teaches professional, creative and academic writing at Penn.  Taransky received a BA in English with honors from The University of Chicago and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. The author of Sorry Was In...
2023 Celebrity Judge – Gilad Jaffe

2023 Celebrity Judge – Gilad Jaffe

Gilad Jaffe is an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Originally from New York City, he holds a BA in Written Arts from Bard College where he was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in...
2022 Celebrity Judge – Grace Cavalieri

2022 Celebrity Judge – Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s Tenth Poet Laureate. She’s the author of 26 books and chapbooks of poetry. She’s had several plays, short-form and full-length, produced, most recently “Quilting The Sun,” NYC 2019. She founded, produces and hosts “The Poet and the Poem,”...
2021 Celebrity Judge – Ernest Hilbert

2021 Celebrity Judge – Ernest Hilbert

Ernest Hilbert is the author of Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, and Caligulan, which was selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize. His fourth collection, Last One Out, appeared in March 2019. He lives in Philadelphia where he works as a rare book...