David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University and the author of The House of Blue Light (2000) and The Ha-Ha (2003), both selected by Dave Smith for the Southern Messenger Poets series published by Louisiana State University Press. He has two books forthcoming in 2007, The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems (also by LSU Press) and an essay collection entitled Ultra-Talk: Johnny Cash, The Mafia, Shakespeare, Drum Music, St. Teresa Of Avila, And 17 Other Colossal Topics Of Conversation (University of Georgia Press). His work appears regularly in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies.

Previous Judges
Tree Riesener and Peter Krok