The 2011 Tournament of Books Judges

Elif Batuman lives in Istanbul, where she is writer-in-residence at Koç University, and writes for the New Yorker. Her first book, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, was published in 2010.

Rosecrans Baldwin is a founding editor of The Morning News. His first novel, You Lost Me There (Riverhead), was named an editors’ choice by the New York Times Book Review and a Best Book of 2010 by NPR. His next book, Paris I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. When he orders takeout, he leaves John as his name at the counter.

Matthew Baldwin is a programmer from Seattle who lives with the Best Wife Ever and a handful of good-for-nothing cats. He runs the website defective yeti, loves to play board games, and once convinced 30 sober adults to run the 100-meter dash with their pants around their ankles.

Matt Dellinger is the author of Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway.

Anthony Doerr is currently a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His most recent book is Memory Wall.

Michele Filgate is the Events Coordinator at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, N.H. She’s a writer, book critic, and freelance producer for NHPR’s Word of Mouth. Her reviews have been published in the Star Tribune, Bookslut, the Quarterly Conversation, the Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. Follow her on Twitter.

TMN Reader Judge Contest Winner Catherine George was born and raised in British Columbia, where she first got started with books when her mother took a job at the local library and assigned the book stacks to be her babysitter. She graduated from a BFA in Creative Writing in 2006 and has been struggling to figure out what to do with it ever since. In 2009, she quit a job as a reporter to spend a year writing the Great Canadian Novel. Result: one 400-page clunker of a first draft and one kernel of something better. Despite currently being a law student, she continues to believe she’ll finish the novel.

Radhika Jones is an assistant managing editor at Time, supervising coverage of culture and society. Previously, Jones was the managing editor of The Paris Review. Her writing has appeared in Time, The Paris Review, the New York Times Book Review, and Bookforum, where she wrote a column called “Collections,” profiling cultural figures through the contents of their bookshelves.

Jessica Francis Kane is the author of a story collection, Bending Heaven (Counterpoint), and a novel, The Report (Graywolf Press), which was a finalist for the 2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and a Barnes & Noble “Discover” pick. Kane’s writing has appeared in many publications, including VQR, McSweeney’s, and Granta. A new story collection is forthcoming from Graywolf next year. She lives in New York with her husband and their two children.

Hamilton Leithauser is the lead singer of the band The Walkmen.

C. Max Magee created and edits The Millions. He is co-editor of the forthcoming collection of essays, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books.

Sarah Manguso’s most recent books include The Two Kinds of Decay and Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape. Honors for her writing include a Hodder Fellowship, the Rome Prize, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. Her next book, The Guardians, a prose elegy, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Kate Ortega is—most days—an assistant news editor for the website of the Wall Street Journal. She is from Columbus (Ohio, but she shouldn’t need to clarify that), she knows the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, and she is oddly proud of both of these accomplishments. In her free time, she enjoys living in Brooklyn, knitting (mostly hats), and running in the park (mostly fast).

John Roderick is currently the lead singer and guitarist in the band The Long Winters. His first book of extremely short prose, Electric Aphorisms, was published in November 2009.

Jennifer Weiner is the author of eight books, including Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, Best Friends Forever, and Fly Away Home. She is a graduate of Princeton University and lives in Philadelphia with her family. She can be found on Twitter.

John Williams is the founder and editor of The Second Pass, an online book review. His work as a freelance writer has appeared in Slate, Stop Smiling, the Barnes & Noble Review, and other publications.

Andrew Womack is a founding editor of The Morning News and the publisher of The Staff Recommends.