Lee Sharkey is the co-editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal and the author of Calendars of Fire; A Darker, Sweeter String; and eight other full-length poetry books and chapbooks. She is the recipient of the Abraham Sutzkever Centennial Prize and the Maine Arts Commission’s fellowship in literary arts.

Jenny Johnson's poems appear in The Best American Poetry 2012, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere. She won the Beloit Poetry Journal’s Chad Walsh Poetry Prize for her poem “Aria.” She is a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches writing.

Douglas Kearney teaches in the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts and has taught in the theater and music schools. Patter is his third book. His second, The Black Automaton, was a National Poetry Series selection. A librettist, his operas include Crescent City, Mordake, Sucktion, and Freedom of Shadow.

Ocean Vuong is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Burnings and No. A Kundiman fellow, he is a recipient of the 2012 Stanley Kunitz Prize, a 2013 Pushcart Prize, and the 2013 BPJ Chad Walsh Poetry Prize. Poems appear in Poetry, the Nation, and Beloit Poetry Journal, amongst others.

TJ Jarrett is the author of Zion, winner of the 2013 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, and Ain't No Grave. Her poems appear in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry, Boston Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review.