Melanie McNair is an MFA candidate at Rutgers University-Camden where she co-founded the Rutgers Radicals, a student group whose mission is to address the ways race, class, gender, sexuality, and power structures intersect with writing and teaching. She writes fiction and creative nonfiction.

Cynthia Gehrig is president of Jerome Foundation, an arts grantmaker located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Jerome Foundation makes grants to support the creation of new works by emerging artists. She is also president of Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France, a residency center for artists and scholars.

Sharon Dynak is president of Ucross Foundation, which operates an artist-in-residency program on a 20,000-acre working cattle ranch in northeastern Wyoming. Previously, she worked in New York City for fifteen years in the publicity department of the book publisher Scribner.

Amaud Jamaul Johnson is the author of two poetry collections, Darktown Follies and Red Summer, winner of the Dorset Prize. His honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Fellowship. He teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy, Famous Builder, The Burning House, and Unbuilt Projects. He teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers-Camden and serves on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. A new book, The Narrow Door, is forthcoming in 2014.