Stephanie Vanderslice's recent books include Studying Creative Writing, Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught, and Rethinking Creative Writing. Professor and director of the Arkansas Writer's MFA Workshop, her column "The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life" also appears regularly in the Huffington Post.

Leanna James Blackwell is the director of the MFA in creative nonfiction at Bay Path University and a documentary playwright with the Northampton Playwrights Lab. A published essayist and short story writer, she has been writing, editing, and teaching for twenty years, with a focus on arts writing and the personal profile.

Judith Baumel is a poet, critic, and translator. She is professor of English and founding director of the creative writing program at Adelphi University. She served as president of AWP. Her books of poetry are The Weight of Numbers, Now, and The Kangaroo Girl.

Janet Sylvester's books are After-Hours at the Museum of Tolerance (finalist at Paris Press), The Mark of Flesh, and That Mulberry Wine. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and PEN Discovery Award. She directs the low-res BFA program in creative writing at Goddard (VT).