We are excited to announce the judges for our 2024 Curt Johnson Prose Awards. Leslie Jamison will judge nonfiction and Tlotlo Tsamaase will judge Fiction. We are beyond thrilled to have these phenomenal writers judge our 2024 contest. The Curt Johnson Prose Awards will be open March 1 – May 1. For more information check out our contest guidelines here.
Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams; the collection of essays Make It Scream, Make It Burn, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award; and the novel The Gin Closet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She writes for numerous publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the New York Times, Harper’s, and the New York Review of Books. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn. Her most recent book, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, comes out on February 20, 2024.
Tlotlo Tsamaase is a Motswana author (xe/xem/xer or she/her pronouns). Tlotlo’s debut adult novel, Womb City, is out now from Erewhon Books. Tlotlo is a Caine Prize finalist. Xer novella, The Silence of the Wilting Skin, is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award finalist and was shortlisted for a 2021 Nommo Award. Tlotlo has received support from the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, and xer story “Behind Our Irises” is the joint winner of the Nommo Award for Best Short Story (2021). Tlotlo’s short fiction has appeared in Africa Risen, The Best of World SF Volume 1, Clarkesworld, Terraform, Africanfuturism Anthology, and is forthcoming in Chiral Mad 5 and other publications. Xe is a 2017 Rhysling Award nominee and a 2011 Bessie Head Short Story Award winner. Xe obtained a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Botswana and won an award for design architecture. Tsamaase is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Chapman University.
