Past Editorial Team Members & Judges

HANIF ABDURRAQIB is Proximity‘s 2018 Personal Essay Prize Judge. He is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His writing has been published in The The New Yorker, The New York Times, and PEN American, among other journals. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio) was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He has two books forthcoming: Go Ahead In The Rain, a biography of A Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press) and They Don’t Dance No’ Mo’ (Random House).

BRONWEN DICKEY was Proximity‘s 2016 Narrative Journalism Judge. She is a contributing editor at The Oxford American and the author of Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon. Her writing has also appeared (or is forthcoming) in Best American Travel Writing 2009, The New York Times, Newsweek, Outside, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Popular Mechanics, Slate, Garden & Gun, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. She lives in North Carolina.





TED CONOVER was Proximity’s 2017 Narrative Journalism Judge. His book Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep. Conover is also the author of Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes, Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America’s Mexican Migrants, Whiteout, and The Routes of Man. He contributes to the New York Times Magazine, Harpers, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and other publications. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he teaches at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University.



Editor SHASTA GRANT is author of Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home, a chapbook with Split Lip Press, the 2016 SmokeLong Quarterly Kathy Fish Fellow, and Spring 2017 Writer-in-Residence at the Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida. Winner of the 2015 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest, judged by Ann Patchett, her stories and essays have appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, Gargoyle, wigleaf, and elsewhere. A graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, she currently lives in Singapore and Indianapolis. (@shastagrant)



carrie kilman 325 cropFounding Editor CARRIE KILMAN loves stories that explore what can divide and connect different peoples, places, and points of view. A former staff writer for Teaching Tolerance magazine and a graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Carrie has written extensively about social justice movements across the US. Her work has appeared in In These Times, Alternet.org, Tolerance.org, Yankee Magazine, and Wisconsin Public Radio. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. (@cailo)

 

Towles Kintz - 2 croppedFounding Editor TOWLES KINTZ is an essayist, editor, and mother of three. When she isn’t at a playground, in her kitchen, or keeping her toddler from launching himself off of the living room furniture, she seeks respite in great literature. Her essays have appeared in BrevityThe Writer’s Chronicle, and Art House America, among others. Kintz holds a B.A. in English from Davidson College and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She lives in Nashville, Tennesee, with her family.



PAUL LISICKY was Proximity‘s 2016 Personal Essay Judge. He is the author of The Narrow Door, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, as well as Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House, Famous Builder, and  Lawnboy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Buzzed, Conjunctions, Fence, Ploughshares, Tin House, and elsewhere. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has twice been a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. He teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers University, Camden.



Guest Editor SANTI ELIJAH HOLLEY has contributed fiction, essays, and journalism to Tin House, VICE, Pacifica Literary Review, Monkeybicycle, SmokeLong Quarterly, and NAILED, among other places. He is a contributing writer for The Portland Mercury, Portland’s alternative weekly newspaper. A recipient of the 2017 Oregon Literary Fellowship, Holley lives in Portland, Oregon.

 



traci - 275 cropTRACI J. MACNAMARA was a founding editor of Proximity. She played a critical role in building the magazine from scratch, spearheading the creation of Proximity‘s editorial and technical style guides and tirelessly pushing the boundaries of nonfiction storytelling. Macnamara served as issue editor of 1 (Morning), 2 (Crossroads), 4 (Wilderness), 5 (Escape), and 9 (Home). As a writer and literary critic, she has bylines in Backpacker, Vegetarian Times, Isotope, the Patagonia catalog, High Country News, & Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, among others. She currently lives, writes, and edits in Colorado.



TraboldFINALheadshotGuest Editor ERICA TRABOLD is a writer of family and memory. Winner of the inaugural Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize, her debut collection, selected by John D’Agata, will be published in 2018. Her essays have appeared in Proximity, Seneca Review, and The Collagist, and are forthcoming in Passages North, South Dakota Review, and an anthology of lyric essays by Tinderbox Editions. A Nebraska native, Erica has an MFA from Oregon State University, previously served as the nonfiction editor of 45th Parallel Magazine, and was a 2016 artist-in-residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She currently lives in Oregon and writes for the Pleiades Book Review. (@ericatrabold)


img_4039BRAD AARON MODLIN served as Guest Editor of Issue 15, themed CAMP. He is the author of Everyone at This Party Has Two Names – winner of the Cowles Poetry Prize – and the author of Surviving in Drought – a small collection of stories that won The Cupboard‘s annual contest. His nonfiction has appeared in River Teeth, Florida Review, Proximity, Fourth Genre, DIAGRAM, and others. Brad earned his MFA from Bowling Green State and his PhD from Ohio University. He currently lives in Joplin, Missouri, and teaches creative writing at Missouri Southern State University. (@BradAaronModlin)



maggie - 275 cropFounding Editor MAGGIE MESSITT is passionate about narratives most storytellers pass over and places most people will never visit. She spent eight years in South Africa as a freelance journalist, newspaper and magazine editor, and the director of a writing school for women. Most recently, her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Teaching Tolerance, River Teeth, and elsewhere. Longlisted for the 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, The Rainy Season is her first book. She is currently the National Director of Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project, teaches in the Goucher College MFA program, and is finishing her next book, a hybrid of investigation and memoir. She splits her time between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn. (@maggiemessitt)



ADRIANA E. RAMIREZ was Proximity‘s 2017 Personal Essay Prize Judge. She is the author of Dead Boys, a nonfiction novella and winner of the 2015 PEN/Fusion Emerging Writer’s Prize. A Mexican-Columbian nonfiction writer and poet based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ramírez is “Critic At Large” for the Los Angeles Times’ Book Section, co-founder of Aster(ix) Journal, co-founder the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective, and a VONA alum. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of BooksLiterary HubConvolutionHEArtApogee, Guernica/ PEN America, and Nerve.com. She has two collections of poetry, The Swallows and Trusting in Imaginary Spaces. Ramírez is currently at work on The Violence (forthcoming).