Matthew Burgess is an Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College. He is the author of a poetry collection, Slippers for Elsewhere, and a picture book, Enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings. Three new books are forthcoming.

Laurel Snyder is the author of many books for young readers, most recently Orphan Island, which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and Charlie and Mouse, which won the Geisel Award. She teaches in the MFAC program at Hamline University.

Carole Boston Weatherford has authored more than fifty books including the Caldecott Honor winners Freedom in Congo Square, Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Het People to Freedom, and Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement. She teaches at Fayetteville State University.

Bao Phi is Program Director of the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. He has been a spoken word poet since the early '90s. He has performed in numerous venues all over the country, and, as an arts administrator, strives to serve different communities of writers locally and nationally.