Amanda Warren

Amanda Warren, a recent PhD graduate, is a finalist in The Poetry Center of Chicago's 14th Annual Juried Reading Competition, judged by Literary activist and award-winning poet E. Ethelbert Miller. All eight finalists will be published in a chapbook by Dancing Girl Press as well as on The Poetry Center website. Winners will be announced at the 14th Annual Juried Reading Award Ceremony on Saturday, April 26, at 3:30 pm in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium at the Harold Washington Library Center. The cermony will be held as part of the Chicago Public Library's Ninth Annual Poetry Fest.

Michael Gray

Michael Gray's novel Well Deserved was awarded the 2007 Sol Books Prose Series Prize (http://www.solbooks.com).
Michael Loyd Gray (MFA 1996) now lives in Champaign, Illinois; he is the winner of the 2005 Alligator Juniper Fiction Prize, the 2005 The Writers Place Award for Fiction, and has written three novels and a screenplay based on one of the novels. His novel Not Famous Anymore was awarded a grant by the Elizabeth George Foundation. His novel December’s Children was a finalist for the 2006 Sol Books Prose Series Prize, and as mentioned above, his novel Well Deserved was awarded the 2007 Sol Books Prose Series Prize. He recently completed a new novel, Blue Sparta. A lifelong Chicago Bears and Rolling Stones fan, he lives with two insolent cats, EH and Moonpie.