Rebecca Hoogs is the author of Self-Storage and a chapbook, Grenade. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, AGNI, Crazyhorse, FIELD, and others. She is the Program Director for Seattle Arts & Lectures, and a co-director of the Creative Writing in Rome program for the University of Washington.

Terry Blackhawk's Escape Artist won the 2003 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. She also received the 2010 Pablo Neruda Award and has work in many journals, anthologies, and online. A former high school teacher, she is founder of InsideOut Literary Arts, Detroit's acclaimed writers-in-schools program.

Garth Stein is the author of three novels, including The Art of Racing in the Rain, a New York Times and international bestseller. He is the co-founder of Seattle7Writers, a nonprofit collective of Northwest authors working to foster a passion for the written word.

Nick Flynn wrote Some Ether, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands, The Reenactments, The Ticking is the Bomb, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins, Blind Huber, and A Note Slipped Under the Door. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.