Camille T. Dungy is the author of Smith Blue, Suck on the Marrow, and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison. She edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology. Her honors include an American Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, a California Book Award silver medal, and a fellowship from the NEA. She is a Professor in the English department at Colorado State University.

Harryette Mullen has published seven collections of poetry, including Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge, winner of a PEN Beyond Margins Award; Sleeping with the Dictionary, a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award; and most recently, Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary. The recipient of the 2010 Jackson Poetry Prize and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, she is Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Joy Harjo has authored the memoir Crazy Brave; four CDs of music; books for children and young adults; and seven collections of poetry, including In Mad Love and War, recipient of an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. Her many honors include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year.

Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently Silverchest and Double Shadow, recipient of the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry and a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award. Awarded a 2006 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, a Pushcart Prize, and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and professor of English and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches in the Creative Writing Program.