Ms. Valente has won several awards for her poetry.  In 2004, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver selected her poetry chapbook, Inventing An Alphabet, for the national Aldrich Poetry Prize.  She was awarded a Jo-Anne Hirshfield Poetry Award in 2005 for her poem, “Body & Soul” and received an Illinois Arts Council Poetry Award in 2003 for her poet, “Green,” and was a finalist in 2004 for the Emily Dickinson Prize from Universities West Press.

Valente’s poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, RHINO, Folio, The Rambler, AfterHours, National Catholic Reporter, and the anthologies Best Catholic Writing of  2004 and Illinois Poets: Where We Live.  She was a 2006 fellow at the Ragdale Foundation artists’ colony in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Raised in Bayonne, NJ, Valente graduated from the Academy of St. Aloysius in Jersey City, NJ, and received a bachelor’s degree in English and classical languages from St. Peter’s College in Jersey City.  She holds a master’s in fine arts in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Currently at work on a new collection of poems, Valente is also working on a collaboration project with Chicago photographer John Matt Dorn as well as writing a collection of personal reflections on the theme of journey. 

The Hon. Charles Reynard is an Illinois Circuit Court Judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit and accomplished poet.  His passion for poetry allows him to express his experiences of the human condition as a witness to the everyday struggles and suffering as seen in family court.

Reynard’s poems have been published in journals AfterHours and The Crab Orchard Review and the book, Illinois Poets: Where We Live.

A recipient of the 2007 Jo-Anne Hirshfield Poetry Prize, Reynard was a finalist for the Emily Dickinson Award from Universities West Press in 2004 and a finalist for the Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Emerging Poets in 2003.

With a B.A. in English from St. Joseph College and a J.D. from Loyola University, Reynard connects the two disciplines in a presentation he has offered for attorneys and judges, appropriately called “Literature and the Law.”

Together, Charles Reynard and Judith Valente have co-edited Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul (Loyola Press, 2005), an anthology of poems and essays on finding the sacred in the everyday.  They give readings and presentations across the country based on their book and they lead spiritual retreats and workshops on themes from the book.

Please R.S.V.P. by e-mail at Secretary@Saint-Paul-CSPC.org