Jen Benka is the Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets. She worked previously as the managing director of Poets & Writers and for 826 National. She is the author of Pinko and A Box of Longing with Fifty Drawers. Jen holds an MFA from the New School.

Mark Doty's nine books of poems—most recently, Deep Lane—have received the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize. A new prose study of Walt Whitman is forthcoming. He is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University.

Khaled Mattawa’s collections of poetry include Ismailia Eclipse, Zodiac of Echoes, Amorisco, and Tocqueville. His many books of translation include Adonis: Selected Poems and Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems of Saadi Youssef, among others. He is the 2010 recipient of the Academy of American Poets fellowship, and he teaches at the University of Michigan.

Layli Long Soldier holds a BFA from Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Bard College. Her poems have appeared in The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review Online, PEN America and The Brooklyn Rail. Recipient of NACF National Artist Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, and Whiting Award. Her forthcoming book is titled WHEREAS.