Cynthia Guardado /Gwarr-Dah-Doe/ (she/her/hers) is a Salvadoran-American poet and tenured Professor of English at Fullerton College. She is the editor in chief of LiveWire, an online magazine. She has two poetry collections Endeavor (World Stage Press) and Cenizas (University of Arizona Press).

Meliza Bañales was a 2016 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best LGBT Debut Fiction for their novel Life Is Wonderful, People Are Terrific. She served as lecturer in creative writing at UC San Diego from 2015–2020. Their third book, Root for the Underdog, arrived in 2022. They live in Los Angeles.

Reyes Ramirez (he/him) is a Houstonian of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. He’s a 2020 CantoMundo Fellow, 2022 Crosstown Arts Resident, and received grants from Houston Arts Alliance, Poets & Writers, and The Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund. His debut short story collection The Book of Wanderers is out now.

David Campos, a CantoMundo fellow, is the author of the poetry collections Furious Dusk and American Quasar. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Boxcar Review, and LunaLuna, among many others. He teaches English for the Puente Program at Fresno City College.

bridgette bianca is a poet and professor from South Central Los Angeles. Her first book of poetry, be/trouble, was released in 2020. When she is not sharing her poetry, she hosts the series Young, Black, and Tenure-Track where she documents her experiences in higher education.