Prestigious judge and spelling sticklers sign on for Press Club Spelling Bee

Two savvy wordsmiths will judge the National Press Club’s Centennial Spelling Bee on Sept. 18.

Judge Paige Kimble runs The Scripps National Spelling Bee, America's most famous spell-off. Judge Heidi Hamilton chairs the linguistics department at Georgetown University. Both women are ready to determine the fates of the 18 lawmakers and journalists who will go head to head on Sept. 18.

Merriam-Webster will provide the words for the bee, and the judges will determine whether each word has been spelled correctly as contestants cycle past the microphone.

Spellers include four Senators, five members of the House and top Beltway journalists from print and broadcast outlets. The event is open to the media.

For more details, a full list of spellers and to buy tickets, click here.

Kimble, coming to D.C. from Cincinnati, Ohio, is the executive director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee and the program's 1981 national champion. She leads a team that works with almost 300 local media organizations, universities and community organizations, and delivers spelling and vocabulary content to tens of thousands of U.S. schools and millions of students.

“Words are instruments of expression that, when used well, significantly enhance one’s influence and power,” Kimble says. “Who’s more powerful and influential — lawmakers or journalists? Perhaps we’ll find the answer in the spellers, and the words they spell (and misspell), in the National Press Club Centennial Spelling Bee.”

Hamilton, who also enjoyed spelling bees in her day, specializes in issues such as language learning at one of America’s top universities. Her books include "Conversations with an Alzheimer's Patient," "Linguistics, Language, and the Professions," and "Doing Discourse Analysis across Disciplines" for the Oxford University Press.