Melissa Stein is the author of the poetry collection Rough Honey, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. Her work has appeared in New England Review, Harvard Review, Best New Poets, and many others. She has received fellowships from Bread Loaf, Yaddo, and MacDowell.

Mark Doty's nine books of poems—most recently, Deep Lane—have received the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He's also published five books of nonfiction prose. He is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University.

Linda Bierds has published nine books of poetry. Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and prizess from PEN and the Poetry Society of America. She is the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Kevin Young is the author of ten books of poetry and prose, most recently Book of Hours, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Young’s The Grey Album won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2012, and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Victoria Chang's third book of poems, The Boss, was published by McSweeney's Poetry Series in 2013 and won the PEN Center Literary Award and a California Book Award. Her other books are Salvinia Molesta and Circle.