Peggy Shumaker has published seven books of poetry and one lyrical memoir. She is the Rasmuson Foundation's Distinguished Artist for 2014. She served as Alaska State Writer Laureate. Professor emerita at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she teaches in the MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. Shumaker edits Boreal Books and the Alaska Literary Series. 

Judith Barrington won the 2013 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize. She has three poetry books, with a fourth to be released at AWP 2015. Her memoir, Lifesaving, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir and won the Lambda Book Award. Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art is a continuing bestseller.

Anne Caston is the author of three books of poetry: Flying Out with the Wounded, Judah's Lion, and Prodigal. She is a former nurse who now teaches as a core faculty member in poetry at University of Alaska's MFA Program in Creative Writing. 

Cynthia Hogue has published twelve books, including The Incognito Body and the co-translated Fortino Sámano (The Overflowing of the Poem), by Virginie Lalucq and Jean-Luc Nancy. She is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair of Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University.

Eva Saulitis, a writer, teacher, and marine biologist, is the author of four books: Leaving Resurrection: Chronicles of a Whale Scientist; Many Ways to Say It (poems); Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas; and World Become Prayer: A Poem Sequence.