Holly Burdorff serves as the director of the VIDA Count and teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at the University of Alabama, where she is an MFA candidate in creative writing and art & design editor for Black Warrior Review. Her work appears in POOL, Cimarron Review, and Handsome.

Camille Rankine is the author of the poetry collection Incorrect Merciful Impulses, and the chapbook Slow Dance with Trip Wire, winner of the Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Award. She serves on the executive committee for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.

Sarah Marcus is the author of They Were Bears (forthcoming), Backcountry, and Every Bird, To You. She is an editor at Gazing Grain Press, a VIDA: Women in Literary Arts volunteer, and the Series Editor for As Is Ought To Be’s High School Poetry Series: Gender, Identity, & Race.

Prageeta Sharma is the author of four poetry collections: Bliss to Fill, The Opening Question, Infamous Landscapes, and the recent Undergloom. She was a recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at the University of Montana.

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is the author of Karma's Footsteps. Her recent work Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation was one of Split This Rock's 2015 Books We Love. She is poetry editor of African Voices magazine. Her work is the subject of the film I Leave My Colors Everywhere.