2005 Rauxa Prize Judges
Steve Almond is the author of the acclaimed story collections The Evil B.B. Chow and My Life in Heavy Metal. He is also the author of CandyFreak, a delightfully passionate road-trip through the underbelly of small candy manufacturers, with sidestops to discuss the state of American business and politics.
Steve has published stories and poems in publications ranging from Playboy to Ploughshares to Zoetrope, and they have been widely anthologized. He is a regular commentator on the NPR affiliate WBUR in Boston, and teaches creative writing at Boston College. Sometimes called "Somerville's crown prince of cock lit," the creator of "dick lit," and the guy who has "sexed up the short story," Steve is in fact a writer with tremendous heart and an unmatchable wit -- a natural, lyrical storyteller who highlights the human condition with unflinching honesty and passion.
"To me, sex is interesting emotional terrain, dangerous terrain, which is where I want to be spending time as a writer. Writing that doesn't feel dangerous on some level frankly isn't very interesting. But, just to be clear, I'm always aiming for the place where a character, or characters, are in emotional danger, and this happens much more when they're naked and fizzing with lust."
--Steve Almond, in 3 a.m. Magazine
For most of two decades, Managing Editor Leigh Davidson was the be-all and end-all of Down There Press, the groundbreaking sister company of Good Vibrations. Leigh helped originate the early and famous Herotica series of women's erotica, and struggled to find printers, binders, and reviewers for books like the perennial bestseller, Jack Morin's Anal Pleasure & Health. Few people have greater in-depth knowledge of the world of the small press or the challenges of employing the printed word in the service of a sex-positive message. Leigh has also been one of the long term stalwarts of the innovative Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, and a dedicated volunteer for Rock Medicine, the concertgoer's medical refuge of first resort.
Bill Noble is a writer, poet, educator, biologist, great-grandfather, and community activist, who also happens to be longtime Fiction Editor of the online magazine of literary erotica, Clean Sheets. His work appears in Best American Erotica, Mammoth's Best New Erotica, the Aqua Erotica series, New Millennium Review, the Cloud View Poets anthology, and numerous other anthologies and journals. He has received recognition as varied as a Pushcart Prize nomination, the 1999 Looking Glass Award for Poetry, a Southwest Writers Conference short-story award, and the Cable Car Award for non-profit advertising. He can be found, somewhat demurely, on the cover of David Steinberg's Photo Sex, and somewhat less demurely, in an upcoming Comstock Films DVD about real-life intimate relationships.
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