Fatimah Asghar is a nationally touring poet, photographer, and performer. She has received fellowships and residencies from Fulbright, Millay, University of Michigan, and Kundiman. Her work has appeared in many journals. Her chapbook After is a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.

Evie Shockley is author of the poetry books semiautomatic (Pulitzer Prize finalist) and the new black (Hurston/Wright Legacy Award winner), and the critical study Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry. She is Professor of English at Rutgers University.

Morgan Parker is the author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé and Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night. She is the recipient of a 2017 National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a 2016 Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow.

Dawn Lundy Martin, PhD, is Professor in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Her books include A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering; Discipline, finalist for the LA Times Book Prize; Life in a Box is a Pretty Life; and Good Stock, Strange Blood.