Kevin Prufer is the author most recently of Churches, In a Beautiful Country, and National Anthem. He is editor at large of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, codirector of the Unsung Masters Series, and professor at the University of Houston's creative writing program.

Jane Friedman teaches publishing and digital media at UVA, and formerly held positions at VQR and Writer's Digest. She's a columnist for Publishers Weekly, and her essays have been published in collections by the University of Chicago Press, Seal Press, Milkweed Editions, and McPherson & Co.

Erin Belieu is the author of four poetry collections, including Slant Six. Recent poems have appeared in the New Yorker and Ploughshares. Belieu teaches in the creative writing program at Florida State University, and she is the cofounder of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts.

Daniel José Older is the author of Shadowshaper  and the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series. He coedited the anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History and writes regularly about race and gender.

Roberto Tejada