Meet the 2025 Judges

Christine Stuart-Nunez is the author of The Poet & The Architect (Terrapin Books 2021), Untrussed (University of New Mexico Press 2016) and Bluewords Greening (Terrapin Books 2016) - winner of the 2018 Whirling Prize (literature of disability theme). Her debut prose collection, Chrysopoeia: Essays of Language, Love, and Place, was published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2022. Her work has been the basis for international, cross-artistic collaborations with colleagues in music, dance, visual art, and architecture. Christine served as South Dakota's poet laureate from 2019-2021 and currently teaches for the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Find out more here: christinestewartnunez.com.

John Sibley Williams is the author of seven poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award),The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). A twenty-six-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, and Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. Previous publishing credits include Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and TriQuarterly.

Michael Dylan Welch has been active with haiku for more than 40 years. He founded his press, Press Here, in 1989, edited Woodnotes from 1989 to 1997, and Tundra from 1998 to 2001, and is currently coediting First Frost. Michael cofounded the Haiku North America conference in 1991 and the American Haiku Archives in 1996, and founded the Tanka Society of America in 2000, the Seabeck Haiku Getaway in 2008, and National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com)in 2010. His haiku have been carved into stone in New Zealand, printed on balloons in Los Angeles, and read for the Empress of Japan and at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Michael served two terms as poet laureate of Redmond, Washington, is president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword, and has curated SoulFood Poetry Night since 2006. He was keynote speaker for the 2013 Haiku International Association annual convention in Japan, and had one of his translations printed on the back of 150,000,000 U.S. postage stamps in 2012. Michael has published 76 books, won first place in the Henderson, Brady, Drevniok, and Tokutomi haiku contests, among others, and his poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, translated into more than twenty languages. His website, devoted mostly to haiku, is www.graceguts.com

Iowa Poet Laureate Vince Gotera teaches at the University of Northern Iowa, where he was Editor of the North American Review (2000-2016). He is also former Editor of Star*Line, the print journal of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (2017-2020). His poetry collections include Dragonfly, Ghost Wars, Fighting Kite, The Coolest Month, and the upcoming Pacific Crossing. Recent poems appeared in Altered Reality Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Dreams & Nightmares, The Ekphrastic Review, Philippines Graphic (Philippines), Rosebud, The Wild Word (Germany) and the anthologies Multiverse (UK), Dear America, and Hay(na)ku 15. He blogs at The Man with the Blue Guitar (http://vincegotera.blogspot.com).

Matt Mason is the former Nebraska State Poet and has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times and Matt has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in Rattle, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, and in hundreds of other publications. Mason's 5th book, Rock Stars, was published by Button Poetry in September of this year. Find more at: https://matt.midverse.com/

Robbin Farr is a founder and the editor of River Heron Review since 2018 and River Heron Writers' Workshops, offering a variety of workshops and retreats since 2019. Returning to her own writing after twenty-three years facilitating high-school education as a literature and creative writing teacher, she has since published two books of poetry, Transience (2018) and Become Echo (2023) and has published poems and lyric essays in numerous journals and anthologies. Robbin has also presented panels and informational sessions at conferences and with various writers' groups. When not helming River Heron, she mentors novice writers and is on the board of the regional arts council, where she is instrumental in providing support for its literary arts programs. Robbin lives in Pennsylvania with her husband Richard, cat Charlie, and precariously piled stacks of poetry books.

Dorothia Rohner is a full time children's book author and illustrator. Previously, she studied fine art, graphic design, and illustration at several universities. With an interest in both science and art, she ultimately graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in Biological Pre-Medical Illustration. Throughout her various careers as an illustrator and artist, she pursued writing children's books in her free time. Her first authored picture book, I Am Goose! (Clarion-2020) was listed in the Bank Street College of Education, Best Books of 2021-Humor Section. In 2022, her debut author/illustrator book, A Wish for Twins, The Tale of Our Two Miracles, (Doubleday, Penguin Random House) was published. She enjoys working with children and sharing her passions for writing, art, nature and imagination. Visit dorothiarohner.com to learn more.

Katie Ford is the author of four books of poems, most recently, If You Have to Go (Graywolf Press). Her third, Blood Lyrics, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the Rilke Prize. Her second, Colosseum, was named among the "Best Books of 2008" by Publishers Weekly and the Virginia Quarterly Review, and led to a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Larry Levis Prize. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, and The Norton Introduction to Literature. She's also a librettist whose poetry has been set by composer David Serkin Ludwig and then performed at Carnegie Hall and the Kimmel Center, as well as on tour in Europe and Asia. Her fifth book was released by Graywolf in 2024. She teaches at University of California, Riverside. Visit www.fordkatie.com for more information and links to her work.

Sofía Aguilar is a Chicana writer, editor, teaching artist, community organizer, and library professional based on the traditional homelands of the Tongva, Kizh, and Chumash peoples (Los Angeles, California). Her work has appeared in the L.A. Times, Latino Book Review, and New Orleans Review, among other publications. She is the author of zine and chapbook publications, including STREAMING SERVICE: golden shovels made for tv (2021) and STREAMING SERVICE: season two (2022), both self-published; amor. (Bottlecap Press, 2025); and Queer Latine Heroes: 25 Changemakers from Latin America and the U.S. from History and Today (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2025). She is currently at work on her first novel and fourth poetry chapbook.

Robert Schinzel grew up as a rolling stone, a gypsy nomad, moving frequently when his father's work took the family from town to town and overseas, offering him a look at the world as a kaleidoscope of divergent lifestyles and views. With a master's degree in geography, Bob worked for the Forest Service in watershed management, fought wildfires, then left for a 33-year career in law enforcement as both detective sergeant in Sacramento and federal agent and administrator in various states and Panama. After retirement, he began writing poetry to capture the strange visions bottled up inside. He sees humans as the animals they are, with quirks and eccentricities, ugliness and beauty, savagery and compassion. His poems show the close relationships between nature and human behavior. He is a member of the Denton Poets Assembly and the Poetry Society of Texas. His poems have won numerous national contests and appear in over two dozen anthologies. He is author of two poetry books of his own: Into the Fire - A Cop's View in Verse which chronicles his thoughts on the state of law enforcement and firefighting in American society, and Westbound 380 - A Highway Through Time, which won the Fort Worth Poetry Society's William D. Barney Chapbook Contest in 2019. Bob encourages everyone to give poetry a chance, maybe by putting a few words of their own to paper.