Valerie Miner is the author of fourteen books including Traveling with Spirits. She's won three Fulbrights and awards from Rockefeller, McKnight, Bogliasco, Jerome, and NEA. Her work is translated into eight languages and published in over sixty anthologies. She teaches at Stanford and U. of Alaska Low Res. MFA .

Ernestine Hayes belongs to the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Tlingit nation. Alaska Writer Laureate 2017–2019, she is the author of Blonde Indian, an Alaska Native memoir (American Book Award) and its sequel, The Tao of Raven. Hayes is professor of Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Kathleen Alcalá is the author of six award-winning books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently, The Deepest Roots. Honored by Western States Book Award, PNBA Fiction Award, Governors Writers Award, ArtistTrust, Island Treasure, Intl Latino Book Award, and Con Tinta, she is cofounder of Raven Chronicles.

Harold Johnson, since high school, has studied, taught, practiced visual art, and written and read in Portland, Oregon. For two years, he coedited the poetry journal Fireweed. He is the author of the poetry volumes Citizenship and Article.II. and novel The Fort Showalter Blues.

Judith Barrington's fifth poetry book, Long Love: New and Selected Poems was published by Salmon Poetry. She won the 2013 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize. Lifesaving: A Memoir, won the Lambda Book Award and her Writing the Memoir From Truth to Art continues to be a best-seller.