The 19th Marfield Prize Judges

Kim Roberts

Kim Roberts is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Corona/Crown, a collaboration with photographer Robert Revere (WordTech Editions, 2023), and the forthcoming Q&A for the End of the World, a collaboration with poet Michael Gushue (WordTech, 2025). Roberts edited By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book to represent Washington, DC in the Route 1 Reads program. She is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018). Roberts co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June with filmmaker Jon Gann. http://www.kimroberts.org

Elvi Moore

Elvi Moore was General Director of The Washington Ballet for 17 years, after which she founded The Laurel Fund for the performing arts. The Fund gave scholarships to young artists in dance, music and theater. It also produced performances of Dance Theater of Harlem, and brought the Polish National Ballet for performances at the Joyce Theater in New York and the Kennedy Center in DC.

        Elvi Moore wrote two books on dance: biography of Bella Lewitzky, a modern dance pioneer published by Dance Chronicles, and Mary Day, grand dame of dance in the nation’s capital, which received the silver book award from Independent Publishers.

       She has served as a Commissioner of the DCCAH, and has served as a dance panelist for the National Endowment for the arts and for several state arts councils.

Celia Wren

Celia Wren is a freelance arts journalist. Her articles about theater, dance, books, and more have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Village Voice, Newsday, the Boston Globe, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Smithsonian, among other publications. She is a former managing editor of American Theatre and was the longtime TV and media critic for Commonweal. She lives in Washington, D.C.