Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement and one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam. A four-time National Poetry Slam champion, he is the founder of the Page Meets Stage reading series in New York City.

Nick Flynn wrote Some Ether, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands, The Reenactments, The Ticking is the Bomb, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins, Blind Huber, and A Note Slipped Under the Door. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.

Tara Hardy is a working class, queer, femme poet who founded Bent, a writing institute for LGBTIQ people in Seattle. She is the author of Bring Down the Chandeliers, Writer In Residence at Richard Hugo House, alumnae of Hedgebrook, and she holds an MFA from Vermont College. www.tarahardy.net

Jamaal May is the author of Hum. Recent work can be found in Poetry, the Believer, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and NER. A Stadler Fellow, he is currently series editor and graphic designer for the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press. His short poetry films can be found on Youtube.

Rachel McKibbens is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Pink Elephant and Into the Dark & Emptying Field. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and co-curator of the series Poetry & Pie Night.