A teacher, earth scientist, writer, photographer, and pilot, Lauret Savoy is author of Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (Counterpoint Press), a finalist for the 2016 PEN American Open Book Award and Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the co-editor of several anthologies. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and professor of environmental studies and geology at Mount Holyoke College.

Patricia Kirkpatrick is the author of Blood Moon as well as Odessa, which was awarded the first Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry and the 2013 Minnesota Book Award. Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Loft Literary Center, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She has taught writing at many colleges, most recently in the University of Minnesota MFA program. She lives in Saint Paul.

Dan Beachy-Quick is a poet, essayist, and translator. His books include Variations on Dawn and Dusk, which was longlisted for the National Book Awards. His work has been supported by the Lannan, Monfort, and Guggenheim Foundations. He is a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University, where he teaches in the MFA program in creative writing.

Ngo Tu Lap has published three collections of poems in Vietnam, as well as five works of fiction, five collections of essays, and many translations from Russian, French, and English. Black Stars, co-translated by Martha Collins, is the first full collection of his work in English and received the PEN Poetry in Translation Award.

Joanna Higgins is the author of Waiting for the Queen: A Novel of Early America, a novel for young readers, as well as A Soldier’s Book, Dead Center, and The Importance of High Places, a collection of short stories.