Thank You to the Preliminary Readers for the 2021 Dorset Prize

Chaun Ballard is an affiliate editor for Alaska Quarterly Review, an affiliate reader for Ruminate Magazine, a graduate of the MFA Program at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and a doctoral student. Chaun Ballard’s chapbook, Flight, was the winner of the 2018 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize and is published by Tupelo Press. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, Rattle, The New York Times, Terrain.org, Tupelo Quarterly, and other literary magazines.



Hayden Bergman
 is a poet, translator, and Books Editor at The Literary Review. His writing and criticism have appeared in the museum of americana,[PANK], and Green Mountains Review. 


Nehassaiu deGannes (she/her/hers) is an actor, poet and theater maker. Shortlisted for the 2020 Montreal her first chapbook, Percussion, Salt & Honey, and Center for Book Arts Award for her second chapbook, Undressing The River, she has enjoyed fellowships from Cave Canem, Community of Writers, Vermont Studio Center, Soul Mountain and the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts. Her work has appeared in International Poetry Prize (judged by Yusef Komunyakaa,) and recipient of The Philbrick Poetry Prize for CallalooThe Caribbean WriterCrab Orchard Review Poem/Memoir/Story, American Poetry Review, ARAVA, Tuesday: An Art Project, Encyclopedia Project (F-K,) A Thousand Ships and the anthology, After Shocks, among others. Her acting credits encompass Off-B’way, regional and international premieres, classical works and the recently released indie feature, Equal StandardMusic for Exile, her first book-length collection was published by Tupelo Press in February 2021. Nehassaiu lives in Brooklyn on the unceded lands of The Munsee-Lenape.



Noah Falck is the author of the poetry collections Exclusions (Tupelo Press, 2020), You Are In Nearly Every Future (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2017), and Snowmen Losing Weight (BatCat Press, 2012). His poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Ploughshares, and have been anthologized in Poem-A-Day: 365 Poems for Every Occasion. He lives in Buffalo, New York.



Geoffrey Gatza is an award winning editor, publisher and poet. He is the driving force behind BlazeVOX, a small press located in Buffalo, NY and was named by the Huffington Post as one of the Top 200 Advocates for American Poetry. He is the author many books of poetry, including A Dog Lost in the Brick City of Outlawed Trees, (Mute Canary 2018) Apollo (BlazeVOX 2014) and HouseCat Kung Fu: Strange Poems for Wild Children (Meritage 2009). Most recently his work has appeared in FENCE and Tarpaulin Sky. His play on Marcel Duchamp was staged in an art installation in Philadelphia and performed in NYC.


Karla Kelsey is a poet, essayist, and editor whose work weaves together the lyric with philosophy and history. She has published three books of poetry: A Conjoined Book (Omnidawn, 2014), Iteration Nets(Ahsahta, 2010), and Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary (Ahsahta, 2006) selected by Carolyn Forché for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. Blood Feather, her fourth book of poetry is forthcoming from Tupelo Press in fall, 2020.

Her book of experimental essays, Of Sphere, was selected by Carla Harryman for the 2016 Essay Press Prize and was published in 2017. Poems and creative prose have been published by such journals as Bomb, Fence,Conjunctions, New American Writing, The Boston Review, Verse, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her critical essays on poetry, poetics, and pedagogy have appeared in anthologies and literary journals.



Maggie Queeney the author of settler, forthcoming from Tupelo Press. Recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, The Ruth Stone Scholarship, and an IAP Grant from the City of Chicago, her most recent work is found in The Los Angeles Review, Colorado Review, and Denver Quarterly. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, and reads and writes in Chicago.


Brynn Saito-Lehl Fresno, CA Jan. 14, 2021 ©Dave Lehl Photography Inc.

Brynn Saito is the author of two books of poetry, Power Made Us Swoon (2016) and The Palace of Contemplating Departure (2013), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She’s the curator of an online project/chapbook, Dear—, and she co-authored with Traci Brimhall the poetry chapbooks Bright Power, Dark Peace (Diode Editions, 2016) and Wild Recovery, published in Four Quartets: Poetry in the Pandemic (Tupelo Press, 2020). Her work and writing have appeared in Vogue, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and American Poetry Review. In 2017, Brynn co-founded Yonsei Memory Project; she has received support from Densho, Hedgebrook, Santa Fe Arts Institute, and the California State Library’s Civil Liberties Public Education Program grant. Brynn is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and English at California State University, Fresno.


Processed with Rookie Cam

Allison Titus is the author most recently of SOB STORY (Barrelhouse Press) and THE TRUE BOOK OF ANIMAL HOMES (Saturnalia Press). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Yaddo, works at an ad agency and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at New England College.