Elise Paschen is the author of The Nightlife, Bestiary, and Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. She has edited many anthologies, including The Eloquent Poem and Poetry Speaks. Former Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America, she teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Tree Swenson is executive director of Hugo House in Seattle. She was previously executive director of the Academy of American Poets. A former AWP board president, her work in the literary arts began with cofounding Copper Canyon Press, where she was publisher and executive director for twenty years.

Frank Bidart’s most recent full-length collection of poetry is Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016, which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He teaches at Wellesley College.

Shane McCrae is the author of, most recently, In the Language of My Captor, winner of the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry, and The Gilded Auction Block, and has received a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and an NEA fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University in New York.

Dorothea Lasky is the author of five books of poetry, including the forthcoming Milk and most recently Rome. She is an Assistant Professor of Poetry and Codirector of Columbia Artist/Teachers at Columbia University's School of the Arts. She lives in New York City.