Moderator:

Jen Benka is the Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets. In her role she advocates for poets and poetry and oversees Poets.org, Poem-a-Day, National Poetry Month, prizes, readings, and more. She is the author of two books of poetry and holds an MFA from the New School.

Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden, Mixology, and The Big Smoke, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. His new book is Map to the Stars. He teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington and is Poet Laureate of Indiana.

Mai Der Vang is the author of Afterland, winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Poetry, Virginia Quarterly Review, the New York Times, and elsewhere.

Toi Derricotte is the author of six poetry collections, including I: New & Selected Poems, The Undertaker’s Daughter, and Tender, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. In 1996, she cofounded with Cornelius Eady the Cave Canem Foundation, a national poetry organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017 and is currently a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.