Allison Joseph is part of the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She is the author of several books of poems, the codirector of the SIUC MFA Program, and poetry edtior for Crab Orchard Review.

Terry Lucas won the 2014 Crab Orchard Review Special Issue Feature Award in Poetry. He is the author of the full-length poetry collection, In This Room, and two chapbooks: If They Have Ears to Hear, winner of the Copperdome Award, and Altar Call. Terry is associate editor of Trio House Press.

Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Phyla of Joy, Ardor, and In Medias Res plus two chapbooks, most recently What the Sea Earns for a Living. Her book of criticism is Anglophone Literatures in the Asian Diaspora: Literary Transnationalism & Translingual Migrations. She serves as chair of the English department at Vanguard University of Southern California.

Lynne Thompson’s collections of poetry include Start with a Small Guitar and Beg No Pardon. Thompson is reviews and essays editor of the journal Spillway and recipient of a City of Los Angeles Fellowship.

Marianne Villanueva has published three story collections—Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila, Mayor of the Roses, and The Lost Language—and edited the Filipino women's anthology, Going Home to a Landscape. She has been an O. Henry Literature Prize finalist and won the Juked Fiction Prize.