Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, Lucky Fish. Honors include the Pushcart Prize and a poetry fellowship from the NEA. She serves as poetry editor for Orion and is the Grisham Writer-in-Residence in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

Jericho Brown wrote Please, which won the American Book Award, and The New Testament, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He is a Guggenheim fellow and an associate professor at Emory University.

Robin Coste Lewis is a Provost's Fellow in Poetry and Visual Studies at USC, where she researches the history of the black anthology and black photography. She is the author of Voyage of the Sable Venus.

Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012–2014). She is the author of four collections of poetry, Domestic Work, Bellocq’s Ophelia, Native Guard—for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize—and, most recently, Thrall.

Rita Dove is a former US Poet Laureate (1993 – 1995) and recipient of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her book, Thomas and Beulah. Her most recent poetry collections are Collected Poems 1974–2004 and Sonata Mulattica. She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.