Hanif Abdurraqib is a writer from the east side of Columbus, Ohio. He is an acclaimed poet and cultural critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, MTV News, and other outlets.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry.

Erika Meitner is the author of six books of poems, including Ideal Cities, a National Poetry Series winner; Holy Moly Carry Me, which won a National Jewish Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Useful Junk.

Ellen Bass’s most recent collection of poems, Indigo, was published in 2020. Her other collections include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. In 1973, she co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!

Eduardo C. Corral is the son of Mexican immigrants. He’s the author of Guillotine, published by Graywolf Press, and Slow Lightning, which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.

Dorianne Laux is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the author of twelve collections of poems, including Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems, Facts About the Moon, and The Book of Men.

Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in poetry, and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

Diane Seuss is the author of six books of poetry. frank: sonnets was the winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Danez Smith is the author of three collections of poems, including Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead.

Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute.