Norma E. Cantú currently serves as professor of U.S. Latino/Latina Studies at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Author of the award-winning novel, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, she is cofounder of CantoMundo and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop.

Valerie Martínez is a poet, educator, and collaborative artist. Her six books of poetry include Absence, Luminescent, World to World, and Each and Her (winner of the Arizona Book Award, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize). She was the Poet Laureate for the City of Santa Fe for 2008-2010.

Barbara Brinson Curiel is professor of English and Critical Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Humboldt State University. Her forthcoming collection Mexican Jenny and Other Poems was selected for the 2012 Philip Levine Poetry Prize. She is a fellow of CantoMundo.

Ruben Quesada, author of Next Extinct Mammal (2011) and Luis Cernuda: Exiled from the Throne of Night (2008), is poetry editor of Codex Journal, Stories & Queer, and The Cossack Review. He teaches literature and writing at Eastern Illinois University.

Diana Marie Delgado, poet and playwright, is graduate of the poetry programs at the University of California, Riverside and Columbia University. She has served as Poet in Residence of Northern New Mexico College and she was awarded the 2005 James D. Phelan Award in Poetry.