Our readers are always changing — a rotating panel of five final judges, representing a cross-section of the American poetry community, chooses the winners from submissions postmarked on or before July 1 each year. And a group of qualified screeners meets at CGU’s Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards offices to screen all submissions and select approximately 50 titles for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and 25 titles for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award to forward to the final judges. Here’s our 2024 awards year team:

2024 Director of the Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards:

Lori Anne Ferrell, Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities at Claremont Graduate University, Louis and Mildred Benezet Chair in the Humanities, and Director of Early Modern Studies Program

2024 Screening Committee:

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, poet and author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge, cofounder of Women Who Submit
Ashley Dailey, poet and multimedia artist; PhD student at USC
Jenny Qi, poet and author of Focal Point

2024 Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards Final Judges:

Lynne Thompson, 2021 Poet Laureate for the city of Los Angeles, board member of Los Angeles Review of Books and Cave Canem, Scripps College Chair of the Board of Trustees Ellen Bass, poet, writer, and writing teacher; author of Indigo, and winner of The Lambda Literary Award and four Pushcart Prizes
Diana Khoi Nguyen, poet and multimedia artist; author of Ghost Of, winner of the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Carmen Giménez Smith, poet and editor, co-director of Latinx poet community CantoMundo; publisher of Graywolf Press
Divya Victorpoet and associate professor at Michigan State University; author of Curb, winner of the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award