Sasha West’s first book, Failure and I Bury the Body, won the National Poetry Series and a Texas Institute of Letters award. She is finishing a manuscript of poems about climate change. She teaches in Austin, Texas, as an associate professor of creative writing at St. Edward’s University.

Joseph Campana is a poet, arts writer, scholar of Renaissance literature at Rice University, and author of The Book of Faces, Natural Selections, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize, and The Book of Life. He has received grants from the NEA, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Houston Arts Alliance.

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of seven poetry collections, including most recently American Samizdat, Dots & Dashes, and The Arranged Marriage, as well as a book of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes. She is a professor at the University of North Texas.

Niki Herd is the author of The Language of Shedding Skin. Her work has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Cave Canem and has appeared in a number of journals. She is completing her PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston.

Sasha Pimentel is author of For Want of Water, winner of the National Poetry Series, and Insides She Swallowed, winner of the American Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, and APR. She was the 2018–19 Picador Professor, is a 2019 NEA fellow, and is an associate professor at UTEP.