Jasminne Mendez is an award winning author, performance poet and educator. She received her BA in English Literature and her MEd in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Houston. She is currently an MFA candidate in the creative writing program at the Rainier Writer's Workshop at PLU

Paul Tran is a 2018 "Discovery"/Boston Review Poetry Prize winner and Chancellor's Graduate Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. Their work appears in the New Yorker and Poetry magazine. Paul is the first Asian American since 1993 to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam.

Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children. A Cave Canem fellow, she holds an MFA from the New School. Elhillo has received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. She lives in DC.

Denice Frohman is an award-winning poet, performer, and educator. She is a CantoMundo Fellow, former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion and Leeway Transformation Award recipient. Her work has appeared in Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, The Acentos Review, ESPNW, and more.

Bill Moran is a performance poet and a former EMT. He was the 2012 & 2013 Austin Poetry Slam Champion and has an MFA from Louisiana State University. He has performed and lectured throughout Europe, Australia, SE Asia, and the US, and he currently teaches for Writers In The Schools.