We are excited to announce the final judges for FC2’s two annual manuscript contests.
Khadijah Queen
will serve as final judge for the 2027
Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Khadijah Queen is the author of eight books of poetry and prose, most recently
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a memoir about her service in the U.S. Navy alongside brief histories of maritime women, published by Legacy Lit/Hachette Books in August 2025. With K. Ibura, she co-edited
Infinite Constellations (FC2 2023), a multi-genre anthology of speculative writing by authors from the global majority. Individual works appear in
Ploughshares,
Poetry,
Gulf Coast,
American Poetry Review,
Harper’s Magazine,
Fence,
LitHub,
The Poetry Review (UK), and widely elsewhere. In 2025 the Foundation for Contemporary Arts recognized her work with the Cy Twombly Award in Poetry. Queen teaches creative writing, literature, and literary theory, and divides her time between the US and Europe.
Vanessa Saunders
will serve as final judge for the 2027
Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. Vanessa Saunders is a Professor of Practice at Loyola University New Orleans. Her feminist, experimental novel,
The Flat Woman, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize with FC2 and was published by University of Alabama Press. This book was ranked as a recommended title with
Kirkus Reviews and received praise from
Electric Literature,
Debutiful,
The New Orleans Advocate, and other journals. She has published over sixty creative pieces and craft essays in
Writer’s Digest,
Seneca Review,
Los Angeles Review,
Sycamore Review,
Passages North,
The Writer’s Chronicle, and
[PANK] among others, and has been offered residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Château d’Orquevaux. Recently her novel
Invisible Illnesses was the runner-up for the Faulkner-Wisdom Contest for the Book-In-Progress category. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she received her MFA from Louisiana State University. She is at work on a novel.
Thanks to Julia Frey for her support of the Sukenick Prize, and to the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for its support of the Doctorow Prize. Submissions for both prizes will be open August 15–November 1, 2026, via Submittable.
