Kevin Young is the author of ten books of poetry and prose, most recently Book of Hours, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Young’s The Grey Album won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2012, and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author of Heaven, The Ground, When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness, and a translation of Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth. He is the recipient of the 2013 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, a 2013 Whiting Award, and the 2013 GLCA New Writer’s Award for Poetry.

Monica Youn is the author of Blackacre, Ignatz, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Barter. She has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow. She currently teaches poetry at Princeton University and at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

J. Mae Barizo is a prize-winning poet, critic, and performer. She is the recipient of awards from Bennington College, the Jerome Foundation, and Poets House. A champion of cross-genre work, she has collaborated with artists such as Mark Morris, Salman Rushdie, and the American String Quartet.