Judges for the Adult and Young Adult categories

Debbie Duncan has been reviewing children's books for the Palo Alto Weekly since 1997. She is the author of the Benjamin Franklin Award-winning picture book "When Molly Was in the Hospital," as well as a book for parents, "Joy of Reading." She also contributes to the Perspectives series of commentaries on KQED radio. When she isn't reading books to find the best to share with Weekly readers, she's writing her own middle-grade novel or hanging out on Twitter, @debbieduncan.

Nancy Packer

Nancy Packer is professor emerita of English at Stanford University, where she taught in the Creative Writing Program. Her short stories have appeared in such journals as Harper's, Yale Review and Sewanee Review and been included in several "O. Henry Prize Stories" collections and "The Best American Short Stories." Sixty of her stories have been collected and published in five volumes; "Old Ladies" is her most recent collection.

Tom Parker

A well-known, local fiction-writing teacher and coach, memoirist, co-author and developmental editor, Tom Parker is an O. Henry Prize-winning short-story writer and author of the novels "Anna, Ann, Annie" and "Small Business." His work has appeared in Harper's and has been reviewed in The New Yorker. He has taught at Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley, and Foothill and Ca