Judges

Below are the judges who have generously given their time to help us with our green stories competitions. These include:

Andrea Learned is an author, speaker, commentator and podcaster with a mission to catalyze climate influence. Her modus operandi involves scouting, developing and amplifying the leadership that is NOT your typical speaker on the usual global stages. Andrea developed and hosted the award-winning “ Living Change: A Quest for Climate Leadership” podcast, and is currently incubating her next show, Climate Influence. She is most known for her deep climate network and her counterintuitive leadership visibility calls to “name and fame” and “love ’em up.” With an early career in marketing to women, during which she co-authored the book “Don’t Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy and How to Increase Your Share of this Crucial Market,” her background may seem winding, but it all aligns beautifully through the lens of Andrea’s contagious joy for big, unexpected impact. Andrea joins us 2025 and will one of the judges for our Flash Fiction competition.

Brian Adams is a Professor of Environmental Science and author of three award winning novels: Love in the Time of Climate Change, KABOOM!, and Offline. He also is Owner/Manager Phippenadams Solar – Empowering Non-Profits through Solar. We are so grateful to Brian – he has been one of our most consistent judges, helping us to judge numerous writing competitions, and contributing his own short story Suck it Up to our anthology No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet.

E.A. Smiroldo (easmiroldo.com) is a nuclear engineer with a BS in Engineering from the University of Maryland, an MBA from Mount Saint Mary’s University, and MA in International Security Studies from Trinity Washington University. She’s also a Washington Area Music Association Award-nominated singer-songwriter and has won prizes in writing competitions sponsored by the Bethesda Literary Festival and the International Screenwriters’ Dig. After placing in the latter, she optioned the treatment for her screenplay with X-ray Media. Her debut novel, a climate change thriller called The Silent Count, is out now on Solstice Publishing.

Cassandre Pouget is a freelance script & book reader and production secretary working in high-end scripted drama. As a script analyst, Cassandra has written detailed reports for Tiger Aspect, Euston Films, Shore Scripts and the BAFTA x Rocliffe screenwriting competition. Cassandra was particularly helpful us whittle down the numerous entries for our QuiBi (Quick Bites) competition and adult novel competition.

Patty Papageorgiou is a writer, script reader and editor with previous work shortlisted at the London Screenwriters Festival competitions and ScreenCraft. Patty is currently Script Editor on a feature in development with funding from Film Wales and Development Producer in the early stages of a Crime Drama series to be pitched at Netflix. Patty has helped us judge the screenplay and QuiBi formats.

James McKay is an illustrator and writer, who has published 3 graphic novels: ‘Dreams of a Low Carbon Future’, ‘A Dream of a Low Carbon Future’ and ‘The Art of a Sustainable Future’. His artwork featured in the book ‘Unlocking Sustainable Cities’ by Paul Chatterton and his work was profiled in Rob Hopkins’ book ‘From What Is to What If’. His climate change related artwork was recently featured on the cover of Nature magazine. James helped us judge the novel and screenplay formats.

Freya Morris is an award-winning writer and her collection ‘This is (not about) David Bowie’ received a special mention in the Saboteur Awards for Best Short Story Collection in 2019. She’s been published in numerous publications in the UK and internationally, and shortlisted for a variety of awards. Freya helped to judge the QuiBi and Flash Fiction formats.

Corey Brotherson is an award-winning writer, editor and creative consultant who has worked in the video games industry since 2001 as a journalist, critic and content producer for over a dozen companies. He guest teaches writing to students, the line editor for award-winning children’s book publisher Butterfly Books, and has scribed over two dozen pieces of fiction, from a TV screenplay adaptation to fully published comic book series. Corey helped to judge the QuiBi and Interactive Fiction competitions.

Dr Eric Shiu from the University of Birmingham is a researcher and educator of innovation including green innovation, and was helpful in helping us to judge the interactive fiction format.

Dr. Amir Keshtiban is a senior lecturer/researcher in at Newcastle Business School specialising in responsible leadership and sustainability and helped to judge the TV/Netflix competition.

Deborah Tomkins is a prize winning short story writer and set up the Bristol Climate Writers Network in 2017. Deborah has helped to judge the orginal short story competition, two novel competitions and screenplay competition.

Special thanks also to Angeli Shiu (age 10) and Charlie Black who read the eight finallists for the children’s stories and shared their opinions with us. We welcomed having a younger perspective.