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Lia Purpura to Judge Contest

If you still haven't submitted to dislocate's Contaminated Essay Contest, here's one more reason to get your submission in: the contest will be judged by award-winning essayist and poet Lia Purpura.

lia2.jpgLia Purpura is the author of three collections of poems, two collections of essays and one collection of translations. On Looking (essays, Sarabande Books, 2006) was a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Towson University Prize in Literature. King Baby (poems, Alice James Books, 2008) won the Beatrice Hawley Award and was a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award and the Maine Literary Award. Increase (essays, University of Georgia Press, 2000) won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction. Stone Sky Lifting (poems, Ohio State University Press, 2000) won the OSU Press/The Journal Award. The Brighter the Veil (poems, Orchises Press, 1996) won the Towson University Prize in Literature. Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Berliner Tagebuch and Taste of Ash (translations, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) was published in 1998.

Her recent essays "Glaciology" and "The Lustres" were awarded Pushcart prizes in 2007 and 2009, and other essays were named "Notable Essays" in Best American Essays, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Lia Purpura is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship (translation, Warsaw, Poland), and a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Her poems and essays appear in Agni Magazine, DoubleTake, Field, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and many other magazines.

A graduate of Oberlin College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching/Writing Fellow in Poetry, Lia Purpura is Writer-in-Residence at Loyola University in Baltimore, MD and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA Program. Recent visiting appointments include The Bedell Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa's MFA Program in Nonfiction; Coal Royalty Visiting Professor at the University of Alabama's MFA Program; Reader/Lecturer at the Bennington Writing Program, and Visiting Writer at the Warren and Patricia Benson Forum on Creativity at Eastman Conservatory. She lives in Baltimore, MD with her husband, conductor Jed Gaylin, and their son, Joseph.