Alice Quinn is Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. She was poetry editor at the New Yorker from 1987-2007 and at Alfred A. Knopf, Publishers, from 1976-1986, and she is the editor of Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box.

Elizabeth Alexander is the author of two essay collections and six books of poetry, including Crave Radiance and American Sublime, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2009, she delivered her poem “Praise Song for the Day” at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Her many awards and honors include the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry and the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. She is the chair of the Department of African American Studies at Yale University.

Frank Bidart’s most recent full-length collections of poetry are Metaphysical Dog, Watching the Spring Festival, Star Dust, Desire, and In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965–90. He has won many prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award and the 2007 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. He teaches at Wellesley College.