Patricia Spears Jones is the author of A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems, three poetry collections, four chapbooks, and two plays for Mabou Mines. She is anthologized in Angles of Ascent and Best American Poetry 2000. Her awards are from NEA, NYFA, and Foundation of Contemporary Art. She is a lecturer at CUNY.

Laura Hinton is a critic as well as multimedia poet, and the author of The Perverse Gaze of Sympathy; Sisyphus My Love; and coeditor of We Who Love to Be Astonished. Recent work appears in Jacket2, the Intima, RedFez, and Poetry Seen. Her blog is Chant de la Sirene, and she edits MT Press.

Aldon Lynn Nielsen is the Kelly Professor of American Literature at Penn State University. His books of poetry include Heat Strings, Evacuation Routes, VEXT, Mixage, Mantic Semantic, and A Brand New Beggar. A new book, Tray, is forthcoming. He is the winner of the Larry Neal Award.

Kirsten Bartholomew Ortega is associate professor of contemporary poetry studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She has published articles on poetry by such poets as Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Diane di Prima, and Lola Ridge.

Jennifer Ryan-Bryant is associate professor of English at SUNY Buffalo, where she teaches courses in American poetry, the American novel, and black literature. She has published on jazz poetry, Bessie Smith, Wanda Coleman, Sonia Sanchez, Ezra Pound, and improvisation, among other topics.