A panel of five distinguished final judges, representing a cross-section of the American poetry community, will choose the winners from submissions postmarked on or before September 15, 2007.

A panel of preliminary judges will meet at Claremont Graduate University's Poetic Gallery for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards Office to screen all submissions. No more than 50 finalists, will be forwarded to the final judges for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and 25 for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

The panel of final judges for the 2008 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards is:

• Robert Wrigley, chair, poet, professor of English at the University of Idaho, and past Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award recipient
• Allison Joseph , award-winning poet, Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
• Robert Pinsky, poet, critic, and past Poet Laureate of the United States
• Alice Quinn, poetry editor of The New Yorker, and executive director of the Poetry Society of America.
• Charles Harper Webb , poet, critic, professor of English at California State University Long Beach, and past Kate Tufts Discovery Award recipient.

The panel of preliminary judges for the 2008 competition includes: Barbara Ras, chair, director of Trinity University Press, and past recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Derick Burleson, poet, and assistant professor in the MFA program at the University of Alaska, and Eugene Gloria, poet, associate professor of English and Creative Writing at the DePauw University.

The decision of the panel of judges is final. Competition results will be mailed to all entrants and publishers.