Peter Sears is the author of five books of poetry. His volume of poetry, New and Selected Poems: Small Talk, is forthcoming in 2014. He is a member of the faculty for Mountain Writers Series and the Pacific University MFA in Writing.

Anita Helle is professor of English and director of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film. She is the editor of The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath and past editor of the American Literary Scholarship annual chapters on American Poetry 1940s to the Present.

Lex Runciman has authored four collections of poetry, including The Admirations, which won the Oregon Book Award. His most recent collections include Starting from Anywhere and the forthcoming One Hour That Morning & Other Poems. He teaches literature and writing at Linfield College.

Maxine Scates is the author of three books of poetry, Undone, Black Loam, and Toluca Street and co-editor, with David Trinidad, of Holding Our Own: The Selected Poems of Ann Stanford. She has received the Starrett Prize, an Oregon Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize.

Christopher Howell has published ten volumes of poems and has published poems, essays, reviews, and interviews in a long list of journals. He has been awarded three Pushcart Prizes, two NEA fellowships, and a number of other distinctions. He teaches at Eastern Washington University and is director of Lynx House Press.