David St. John is the author of many collections of poetry, including Study for the World’s Body, nominated for the National Book Award, and most recently, The Auroras and The Window. He is chair of the Department of English and teaches in the PhD program in literature and creative writing at USC.

Carolyn Forché’s books of poetry include Blue Hour; The Angel of History, which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award; and The Country Between Us. She is also the editor of Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness and the coeditor of Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English 1500–2001. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the director of the Lannan Center for Poetry and Poetics and holds the Lannan Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Linda Gregerson is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Prodigal, and two books of criticism. Among her honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the Kingsley Tufts Award. She is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan.

Terrance Hayes is a poet.