The 2016 Tournament of Books Judges

Blake Bailey is the author of biographies of John Cheever, Richard Yates, and Charles Jackson, and he is working on the authorized biography of Philip Roth. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Parkman Prize, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book, The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait, was a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Award.

Maria Bustillos is a journalist and critic based in Los Angeles. She has written on culture, politics, technology, and business for the New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, The Awl, the Guardian, Bloomberg, etc. Her first published fiction appeared in the Paris Review earlier this year.

Jaime Green’s essays have appeared in The Awl, The Millions, American Theatre online, and elsewhere. She also hosts and produces The Catapult, a podcast of new writing read aloud.

Danielle Henderson is a new TV writer and old freelancer. She lives in the “not Brooklyn” part of New York City.

Brad Listi is the author of the novel Attention. Deficit. Disorder. and the founding editor of The Nervous Breakdown, an online culture magazine and literary community. He is also the host of Otherppl with Brad Listi, a weekly podcast featuring interviews with today’s leading writers. He lives in Los Angeles.

Liz Lopatto is the science editor at The Verge. Before that, she worked at Bloomberg News and before that, founded the Kenyon Review’s blog. Her interests include cats and space explosions.

Syreeta McFadden is a Brooklyn-based writer, photographer, and adjunct professor of English. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, BuzzFeed, NPR, The Nation and Storyscape Journal. She is the managing editor of the online literary magazine Union Station and a co-curator of the group Poets in Unexpected Places. She is currently working on collections of short stories and essays.

Lizzie Molyneux is a writer for the Emmy-winning animated Fox show, Bob’s Burgers, with her writing partner/sister Wendy. Her dog thinks she’s pretty great.

Wendy Molyneux, along with her sister Lizzie Molyneux, writes for the TV show Bob’s Burgers, for which she also voices the massively unpopular character Jen the Babysitter. She is also a frequent contributor to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and other humor sites, and has had several pieces included in the Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology series over the years.

Celeste Ng is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Everything I Never Told You. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, One Story, Gulf Coast, The Millions, and elsewhere, and has been awarded the Pushcart Prize. She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan and lives in Cambridge, Mass.

Kit Rachlis is a senior editor at California Sunday Magazine. He was editor-in-chief of the American Prospect, Los Angeles Magazine, and the LA Weekly, and executive editor of The Village Voice.

Doree Shafrir is a culture writer at BuzzFeed and the author of the forthcoming novel Startup (Little, Brown). She lives in Los Angeles.

Choire Sicha is a co-founder of The Awl, BookForum columnist, former Gawker editor, longtime TMN writer, and author of a book of nonfiction.

TMN 2016 Reader Judge John Taylor is a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he works on the inpatient consultation service in the emergency department, serves as assistant training director for the MGH/McLean residency, and is a project manager in behavioral health integration. He is also an instructor at Harvard Medical School. He lives in Cambridge, Mass.

Miriam Tuliao works for BookOps, the shared technical services organization of the Brooklyn Public Library and New York Public Library. She is a member of the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association and American Library Association.

Jeff VanderMeer’s most recent fiction is the New York Times bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), which won the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award, and made Entertainment Weekly’s list of the top 10 books of the year. Paramount Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions acquired the movie rights with Alex Garland set to direct. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, The Atlantic’s website, and the LA Times.

Daniel Wallace is the author of five novels. He directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Kelvin Yu is a writer currently working on the Fox animated series Bob’s Burgers. A Los Angeles native, Yu studied theater and communications at UCLA. He is also an actor whose credits include Milk, Star Trek, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and, most recently, Master of None.

Jess Zimmerman is a writer and editor who’s appeared in Hazlitt, the New Republic, the Guardian, The Hairpin, and others. The Toast once said she was “on fire” but it turned out she was fine. She lives in Brooklyn with all the other writers, and when not working spends most of her time aging, feeling terrible about aging, or frequently both.

Literary Podcast Commentators

Slate’s Audio Book Club is a monthly podcast on the books everyone is talking about. Hosted by Slate words correspondent Katy Waldman, it features a rotating cast of critics, including Dan Kois and Laura Miller, who join Katy as ToB guest commentators, as well as Parul Sehgal, Jamelle Bouie, Meghan O’Rourke, Hanna Rosin, and Emily Bazelon.

Books on the Nightstand is a weekly podcast about books and reading, hosted by Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman. Ann and Michael work for Penguin Random House, though the podcast is a labor of love and not part of their day jobs. Michael has converted Ann into a graphic novel reader, but Ann has so far failed in her efforts to get Michael to read Great Expectations. They tweet at @annkingman, @mkindness, and @BksOnNightstand.

The Book Report is a bi-weekly literary web series presented by The Millions, and hosted by book critics and friends Michael Schaub and Janet Potter. Schaub has written for NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times Book Review, Potter has written for the Chicago Reader, Chicago Magazine, and the A.V. Club, and they both really hated Dune by Frank Herbert. They tweet at @michaelschaub, @sojanetpotter, @bookreportshow, and @The_Millions.

Christopher Hermelin and Drew Broussard are co-hosts of the book podcast that celebrates reading, So Many Damn Books. Christopher is a literary agent and Drew is the Special Artistic Projects Associate at the Public Theater. They are both writers and readers, forever indebted to the ToB for sparking their real-life friendship.