Lynn Pruett is the author of the novel Ruby River. Her fiction has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Border Crossing, and Southern Exposure. Her awards include a Hayden Sterling Scholarship, the Joanna Scott Award, and a residency at Yaddo.

Lorraine M. López teaches in Vanderbilt University's MFA Program. She has published three essay collections and six books of fiction, including Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories. Recent publications include two coedited collections of essays and The Darling, a novel.

Blas Falconer is the author of The Foundling Wheel and A Question of Gravity and Light. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, he teaches at the University of Southern California and in the low-residency MFA at Murray State University.

Rebecca Gayle Howell is the author of Render / An Apocalypse. Her awards include two poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center and a Pushcart Prize. Native to Kentucky, Howell is the poetry editor at The Oxford American.

Ansel Elkins is the author of Blue Yodel, which won the 2014 Yale Younger Poets Prize. Her poems have appeared in The American Scholar, The Believer, Boston Review, Oxford American, Parnassus, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.