Gregory Pardlo's ​collection​ Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Digest​ was also shortlisted for the​ 2015 NAACP Image Award and he is a current finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His other honors​ include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

J. Mae Barizo is a prizewinning poet, critic, and performer. She is the recipient of awards from Bennington College, the Jerome Foundation, and Poets House. A champion of cross-genre work, she has collaborated with artists such as Mark Morris, Salman Rushdie, and the American String Quartet.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a writer and poet. Four Way Books will publish his latest collection of poems, Bastards of the Reagan Era.

Catherine Bowman is the author of 1-800-HOT-RIBS, Rock Farm, Notarikon, The Plath Cabinet, and Can I Finish, Please? She is editor of Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR's All Things Considered. She teaches at Indiana University, Bloomington and is the former director of IU's MFA program.

Jonathan Wells's poems have appeared in the New Yorker, AGNI, Ploughshares and many other journals. His first collection isTrain Dance. His second collection is The Man With Many Pens.