Jennifer Jean’s books of poetry include: The Fool, The Archivist, and In the War; her poetry and reviews appear in Drunken Boat, Tidal Basin, and the Mom Egg. She is a Mass Poetry Festival organizer and blogs for Amirah (a sex-trafficking survivor advocacy group), and she teaches at Salem State University.

Jill McDonough is the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes as well as NEA, Cullman Center, and Stegner fellowships. Her books include Habeas Corpus and Where You Live. She directs the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts Boston and 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center online. 

Fred Marchant is the author of four books of poetry, most recently a twentieth anniversary second edition of Tipping Point, his first book. He has a new collection forthcoming, titled The Day Later, and he is the founding director of the Suffolk University Poetry Project in Boston, Massachusetts.

Katy Ryan founded the Appalachian Prison Book Project, a nonprofit that sends free books to women and men imprisoned in six states. She teaches courses in 20th-century American literature at West Virginia University and she edited a collection of writings on the death penalty, Demands of the Dead.

Julie Batten is visiting fellow at the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts,  Boston; visiting professor of English at Salem State University; and executive director of the Glass House Shelter Project, bringing accredited college-level reading and writing courses into shelters in the Greater Boston area.