Guest Judge

Vitaly Ovchinnikov immigrated to the United States from Kiev in the early 1990s and currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts. He holds a B.S. from Georgetown University, summa cum laude, with a double major in Mathematics and Biochemistry, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Mechanical Engineering. Vitaly is currently employed as a postdoctoral fellow with MIT and Harvard University working in the field of Computational Chemistry.

Outside of academic pursuits Vitaly plays jazz guitar and piano. His favorite composer is the Russian Jazz pianist Kapustin. He is also well-versed in classic literature – the traditional canon of American, British, and German authors – with a focus on Russian writers. In his spare time Vitaly enjoys playing chess with his cats Ollie and Berkley.

Sherri Cook Woosley earned her M.A. in English Language and Literature from University of Maryland, College Park. She taught high school English before accepting graduate funding to teach classes in academic writing and world mythology at University of Maryland. Academically Sherri has published "Mythological and Archetypal Images in The Peach Thief" and presented an excerpt from her Master’s research, "Women in the Shadow" at a Rutgers Conference entitled Disciplinary Boundaries. Her fiction has been published by Mount Zion Fiction Review and her story “The Man with the Patchwork Soul” is being included in the August 2008 Maryland Writers’ Association anthology.

Elyse Beaulieu earned her M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park with "Recovering Trauma: War in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings." Prior to her graduate work, she served as a high school English teacher and as an editor and contributor to the quarterly American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators publication, Move. Ms. Beaulieu currently works as an Assistant Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Maryland and as a part-time lecturer in world mythology.

Nancy Adler has earned an advanced degree from Towson University in English Literature and an M.S. in Clinical Counseling from Johns Hopkins University. She currently teaches at the secondary level in Baltimore. A native of Baltimore, Nancy spends her time walking Kelev, her energetic boxer, reading with Edgar, her aloof cat, and mothering her darling Ryan.