Introducing our esteemed panel of judges for the 2026 Erma Bombeck Writing Competition which includes actors, authors, bloggers, columnists, comedians, directors, editors, producers, professors, and writers from across the globe! We thank them for their time and expertise! See the list of judges from the last competition.
The Library is proud to announce that Beth Macy and Betsy Bombeck will serve as finalist judges for the 2026 Erma Bombeck Writing Competition.
Beth Macy is a Virginia-based journalist who writes about outsiders and underdogs. She is the New York Times best-selling author of four books, including Factory Man and Dopesick, which won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, and was described as a "masterwork of narrative nonfiction" by The New York Times.
Dopesick was made into a Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning Hulu series; Macy was an executive producer and cowriter on the show. Her 2022 book, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis, was a follow-up to Dopesick and explored on-the-ground solutions to the nation's drug epidemic.
A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2010 Nieman Fellow for Journalism at Harvard, Macy has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. Her next book, Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, is a combination memoir and reported examination of the rural-urban divide told through the lenses of declining upward mobility, political polarization, and the decimation of local and regional news. It will publish October 7, 2025.
Betsy Bombeck, the only daughter of Bill and Erma Bombeck, is a licensed master social worker who is a Faculty Associate in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. Currently she is establishing a private practice focusing on complex trauma, addictions, adoption, LGBTQ+ community issues, and somatic therapies in Phoenix, Arizona. As if that isn't enough, she has been the President/Owner of Bombeck Design Group, Inc a design/build company established in 2005 and AZ Dump Trailer Services.
Most recent board service includes serving as the co-chair along with her brothers Matt and Andy of the National Kidney Foundation of Arizona's Capital Campaign, the president of the Board of South of the Salt providing 12 step recovery meetings in Phoenix, and board member of the Foundation for Living Medicine creating new paradigms in the delivery of health care world wide. In her spare time (I know you're thinking when does that happen--but it does) she enjoys travel, Phoenix Suns basketball, any college or professional women's basketball game (especially the Phoenix Mercury), reading, learning, and advocating for women. To say the least she really enjoys life to the fullest!
