Ann Whitfield Powers is the executive director of Fishtrap, a literary arts organization based in Northeastern Oregon dedicated to promoting clear thinking and good writing in and about the West.

Robert Michael Pyle is a lepidopterist, essayist, poet, and fiction writer. His seventeen books include Wintergreen, Where Bigfoot Walks, and Sky Time in Gray's River. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the Burroughs Medal, and a National Outdoor Book Award, as well as several butterfly standards. He has taught at many universities.

Ellen Waterston is the award-winning author of three books of poetry, I Am Madagascar, Between Desert Seasons, and Via Lactea; a collection of essays, Where the Crooked River Rises; and a memoir, Then There Was No Mountain. She is the founder and director of the Writing Ranch based in Bend, Oregon.

Charles Goodrich is the author of three books of poetry, A Scripture of Crows, Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden, and Insects of South Corvallis; and a collection of essays, The Practice of Home. He serves as director for the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word.

Donald Witten is a recently retired Oregon English teacher. He is a two-time veteran of Fishtrap's Outpost, self-publishing two books of his and other Outposters' photography, poetry, and prose.