Competition judge Anne Barngrover says "I was struck from the first sentence by the crystalline narrative voice—sometimes uncanny, sometimes weird, but always precise, unflinching, and painfully self-aware—and the experimentation with form as a way to dig deeper and question ideas of religion, family, place, community, masculinity, death, and the self. These essays, and their narrator, wouldn’t shake from me after I read them. I wholeheartedly recommend Baptizing the Dead and Other Jobs."