Submissions for 2026 are now CLOSED.
Reading and judging process to follow! Stay tuned.
This year’s CONTEST
Meet the Judges
Pieces for the 2026 edition of Well Versed will be judged by:
Poetry
Agnes Vojta
Agnes Vojta grew up in Germany and now lives in Rolla, Missouri where she teaches physics at Missouri S&T and hikes the Ozarks. She is the author of Porous Land, The Eden of Perhaps, and A Coracle for Dreams (Spartan Press), and her fourth collection Love Song to Gravity has come out from Stubborn Mule Press in 2025.
Agnes is associate editor of Thimble Literary Magazine and host of the Poetry at the Pub reading series in Rolla. Her poems have appeared in a variety of magazines; you can read some of them on her website agnesvojta.com.
NONFICTION
Clarence Wolfshohl
Clarence Wolfshohl has been active in the small press as writer and publisher for over fifty years, publishing poetry and non-fiction in many journals, both print and online, including, Agave, Cape Rock, New Letters, Southwest American Literature, and The Mailer Review. His latest publication is Play-Like (Alien Buddha Press, 2025).
FICTION
Marlene Lee
When she’s not reading, playing the piano, or talking to other writers, Marlene Lee holds down a table at a local coffeehouse confronting blank pages and postponing the inevitable with another cup of coffee.
Before writing full-time and settling in Columbia MO, she carted her stenotype machine from place to place (eventual settings for her fiction) in a moveable feast of freelance court reporting. Earlier, she taught high school, children’s special education, college English, and vocational school classes in stenotype.
She was first published in 2013. Lee’s fiction titles: The Absent Woman, Rebecca’s Road, Scoville, Limestone Wall, No Certain Home (Holland House books); Inner Passage, Collected Short Stories (Experiments in Fiction); Anna and Sebastian, Middler (Stephen F. Austin State University Press)
Her author page can be found at marlenelee.wordpress.com.
FLASH FICTION
Crystal D. Budy
Crystal D. Budy has a Master’s degree in psychology and utilizes her knowledge to develop flawed, layered characters.
She lives just outside Cleveland, Ohio with her husband of nearly twenty years and their clingy black cat, Monkey.
An avid reader since childhood and writer since she was old enough to pick up a pen, she enjoys writing (and reading) about romance and mystery, particularly when they’re combined.
You can learn more about Crystal at her website www.crystaldbudy.com
Writer Wisdom
“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King