Utah Original Writing Competition

Chantelle Aimée Osman: Young Adult/Middle Grade

Chantelle Aimée Osman (she/her) is senior editor at Simon & Schuster's newest imprint, Simon Maverick. Prior to joining Simon & Schuster, Chantelle was an 1acquiring editor at Amazon Publishing, where she worked with bestselling authors such as Robert Dugoni, Mark Sullivan, Suzanne Redfearn, Megan Chance, Victoria Helen Stone, and Simon Tolkien. Previously, she helped found Agora Books, an imprint of independent press Polis Books, focusing on crime fiction and horror with unique social and cultural voices—themes which still hold a special place in her heart. At Agora, she acquired and edited authors including John Vercher, Cynthia Pelayo, Gabino Iglesias, and Tori Eldridge.

Her titles have won International Latino Book Award medals; been nominated for Edgar, Stoker, Dagger, Anthony, Strand Critics, Macavity, and Lefty awards; and been featured in NPR, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Chicago Tribune, Reader’s Digest, Oprah Daily, People, and Entertainment Weekly. She was named a Publishers Weekly Rising Star honoree in 2020, was the former editor-in-chief of RT Book Reviews magazine, and is a (recovering) lawyer and a professor at the LIU Brooklyn Polk School of Communication MFA in Writing and Publishing.

Darci Schummer: Novel

Darci Schummer hails from the village of Fall Creek, Wisconsin. Primarily a fiction writer, she is the author of the forthcoming story collection Keystone Species (Unsolicited Press, 2027), which was a finalist for the New American Fiction Prize from New American Press; the novel The Ballad of Two Sisters (Unsolicited Press, 2023), which was a finalist for the Many Voices Project from New Rivers Press; Six Months in the Midwest (Unsolicited Press, 2014); and the poetry chapbook The Book of Orion (Bottlecap Press, 2024). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Ninth Letter, Folio, Jet Fuel Review, MAYDAY, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, Sundog Lit, and Pithead Chapel, among other places.

She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and the Creative Writing Director at Colorado State University Pueblo, where she also curates the Southern Colorado Reading Series.

Elizabeth Joy Levinson: Poetry

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a high school biology teacher in Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, South Florida Poetry Journal, One Art, The Shore, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fiction.

She is the author of a full-length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, available from Unsolicited Press, two chapbooks: Running Aground (Finishing Line Press) & As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press), and a micro chapbook, Thigmonasty (Ghost City Press).

Raki Kopernik: Short Story

Raki Kopernik is a first-generation American, Jewish writer. She is the author of The Things You Left and The Memory House, both Minnesota Book Award finalists, and the new novel, No One’s Leaving. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and has been shortlisted and nominated for several other awards, including the Pushcart Prize for Fiction and the Pen Faulkner Award in Fiction.

She teaches creative writing both at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design and at Augsburg University. You can find her on Instagram @rakikopernik.

Leigh Camacho Rourks: Novel

Dr. Leigh Camacho Rourks serves as an associate professor of English and humanities at Beacon College. She holds a Ph.D. in English and creative writing, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, a Master of Arts in English, and a Bachelor of Arts in humanities. Rourks teaches creative writing and various courses, including African American Literature and Monster Literature.

Rourks has been featured in publications such as WOW! Women on Writing, InHerSight, and Entertainment Weekly. She has contributed academic articles and chapters to journals and books, focusing on topics such as podcasting and multimodal literacies in the creative writing classroom. She has received several honors and awards for her writing, including the St. Lawrence Book Prize and the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award.

Rourks is an accomplished author, with two books, Moon Trees and Other Orphans and Digital Voices: Podcasting in the Creative Writing Classroom. She has also published numerous works of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction in various literary journals and anthologies.

Sean Prentiss: Nonfiction/Memoir

Sean Prentiss is the award-winning author of Finding Abbey: a Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave, a memoir about Edward Abbey and the search for home. Finding Abbey won the 2015 National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography, the Utah Book Award for Nonfiction, and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Biography. It was also a Vermont Book Award and Colorado Book Award finalist. 

Prentiss is the series editor for the Bloomsbury Publishing Writers Guide Series. This textbook line focuses on creative writing. Two books, Environmental and Nature Writing: A Craft Guide and Anthology and Advanced Creative Nonfiction (forthcoming 2020) are written by Prentiss. 

Prentiss is also the co-editor of The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction, a creative nonfiction craft anthology, and the co-editor of the forthcoming book, The Science of Story: The Brain Behind Creative Nonfiction (forthcoming 2019, Bloomsbury).

He is also the author of the poetry manuscript, Crosscut: A Trail Building Memoir in Poems (2020, University of New Mexico).

He and his family live on a small lake in northern Vermont, and he serves as an associate professor at Norwich University and is a faculty member in the M.F.A. Writing and Publishing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Simmons Buntin: Essay

Simmons Buntin is the author of Satellite: Essays on Fatherhood and Home, Near and Far; a collection of sustainable community case studies titled Unsprawl: Remixing Spaces as Places; and two books of poetry, Bloom and Riverfall. He’s also the co-editor of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Terrain.org and president of the nonprofit Terrain Publishing.

Simmons lives in Tucson where he is the senior director of marketing and communications at the University of Arizona’s College of Information Science, and can also be found at simmonsbuntin.com or urbanwild.substack.com.