Rose McLarney has published two collections of poetry, Its Day Being Gone and The Always Broken Plates of Mountains. She is assistant professor of English at Auburn University and poetry editor of the Southern Humanities Review.

Jerald Walker is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, and The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult. His essays have been widely anthologized, including four times in The Best American Essays series.

Garrard Conley is the author of a memoir, Boy Erased. His work can be found in Time, VICE, CNN, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Madison Review, the Common, and others. He received scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee conferences, and currently teaches creative writing in New York City.

R.T. Smith is the author of sixteen books of poetry. His books Messenger and Outlaw Style both received the Library of Virginia Poetry Book Prize. Smith is writer in residence at Washington and Lee University, where he edits Shenandoah. His poems have appeared in Atlantic, Best American Poetry, and Poetry.

Chantel Acevedo's most recent novel, The Distant Marvels, was a Booklist Editors Choice pick. Her other novels include A Falling Star and Love and Ghost Letters. She is an associate professor and teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Miami.