Ben Gunsberg is an Associate Professor of English at Utah State University, where he teaches courses in creative writing and English education. His most recent poetry collection, Welcome, Dangerous Life, will be published in the fall of 2018.

TJ Beitelman directs the Creative Writing program at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, a public magnet school for the arts where he has taught since 2002. He's also taught writing and literature at Virginia Tech and the University of Alabama. His most recent poetry collection is Americana.

Maurisa Thompson received her MFA from University of California, Riverside, and has taught secondary school in the San Francisco Bay Area for over twelve years. A Gluck Fellow, VONA alum, and recipient of a 2016 Walter Grant, she is currently working on a poetry collection on the Great Migration and a YA detective novel.

A.H. Jerriod Avant has earned MFA degrees from Spalding University and New York University. A graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Jerriod has received two poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He’s a PhD English student at the University of Rhode Island.