Kazim Ali is a poet, translator, essayist, and fiction writer. His books include Sky Ward, Bright Felon, and Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence. He is associate professor of creative writing and comparative literature at Oberlin College.

Julie Carr is the author of five books of poetry, most recently 100 Notes on Violence, Sarah–Of Fragments and Lines, RAG, and Think Tank. Prose books include Surface Tension: Ruptural Time and the Poetics of Desire in Late Victorian Poetry and Objects from a Borrowed Confession.

Tracie Morris holds an MFA in poetry from Hunter College, and a PhD in performance studies from NYU. Her most recent book is handholding: 5 kinds. She is coeditor of Best American Experimental Writing. Morris is coordinator of the MFA in Performance and Performance Studies at Pratt Institute.

Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, MFA, LMSW, DMin, cofounded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, the first Buddhist organization to offer fully accredited clinical chaplaincy training in America.