Cara Dees is the author of the debut collection Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland, winner of the 2018 Barrow Street Book Prize. Currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati, her work appears in Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.

Yalie Kamara is a Sierra Leonean American writer. She is the author of two chapbooks and is a fellow of the Vermont Studio Center and Callaloo. She is a doctoral candidate in English literature and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. For more: yaylala.com.

Allison Adair teaches at Boston College and GrubStreet. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Kenyon Review, among other journals, and have received the Pushcart Prize, the Orlando Prize, and the Florida Review Editors' Award.

Melissa Cundieff is the author of Darling Nova, a full-length collection of poems. She's also a visual artist and a lecturer at the University of Minnesota.

Janine Joseph is a poet, librettist, and essayist. Her collection Driving Without a License won the Kundiman Poetry Prize and the da Vinci Eye award, and an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oklahoma State University.