2023 Honeybee Prize

2023 Fiction Judge: Roxanne Gay

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda.

2023 Poetry Judge:
Rodrigo Toscano

Rodrigo Toscano is a poet and dialogist based in New Orleans. He is the author of eleven books of poetry. His most recent books are The Cut Point (Counterpath, 2023), and The Charm & The Dread (Fence Books, 2022). His previous books include In Range, Explosion Rocks Springfield, Deck of Deeds, Collapsible Poetics Theater (a National Poetry Series selection), To Leveling Swerve, Platform, Partisans, and The Disparities. His poetry has appeared in over 20 anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Best American Experimental Poetry (BAX), Voices Without Borders, Diasporic Avant Gardes, Imagined Theatres, In the Criminal’s Cabinet, Earth Bound. 

Toscano has received a New York State Fellowship in Poetry. He won the Edwin Markham 2019 prize for poetry. His works have been translated into French, Dutch, Italian, German, Portuguese, Norwegian and Catalan. He works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the United Steelworkers, the National Institute for Environmental Health Science, Communication Workers of America, National Day Laborers Organizing Network, and northwest tribes (Umatilla, Cayuse, Yakima, Nez Perce) working on educational training projects that involve environmental and labor justice, health & safety culture transformation. rodrigotoscano.com

2023 Nonfiction Judge:
Hugh Reilly

Hugh Reilly has a BA in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) and attended the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Arizona before finishing his Master’s degree in Communication at UNO.  He began teaching at UNO in 1999. Professor Reilly was the Director of UNO’s School of Communication from 2013 – 2021. He was also a member of UNO’s Native American Studies Faculty. 

Hugh has written or co-written seven books, including, Bound to Have Blood: Frontier Newspapers and the Plains Indian Wars, originally published by ABC Clio – Praeger, was reprinted by The University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books in October of 2011. His latest book, published by Tulleygarvey Press in 2019, is Drinking with My Father’s Ghost: A Journey Through Ireland’s Pubs.