Mai Der Vang is the author of two collections of poetry. Her first book, Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), received the First Book Award of the Academy of American Poets, was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry, and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her second collection, Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and the L.A. Times Book Prize in Poetry, and is currently a finalist for the California Book Awards.

Mai Der also co-edited How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology with the Hmong American Writers’ Circle. A Kundiman fellow, Mai Der has completed residencies at Civitella Ranieri and Hedgebrook. Born and raised in Fresno, California, she earned degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.

Source: MaiDerVang.com

Writer, artist, philosopher, and pianist Will Alexander was born in Los Angeles, California in 1948 and has remained a lifetime resident of the city. He earned a BA in English and creative writing from the University of California–Los Angeles in 1972. Alexander’s books of poetry include Across the Vapour Gulf (2017), Compression & Purity (2011), The Sri Lankan Loxodrome (2009), Asia & Haiti (1995), and The Stratospheric Canticles (1995). He has taught at many colleges and universities, including the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, the University of California, and Hofstra University, among others. His collection Singing In Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose, Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture (2013) was awarded an American Book Award. His other honors include a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and the 2016 Jackson Poetry Prize.

Source: PoetryFoundation.org

francine j. harris is originally from Detroit, Michigan, where she grew up in one of many neighborhoods operating in economic limbo in the aftermath of the motor industry collapse. After high school, harris moved to Arizona and attended several community colleges part-time before earning a scholarship to attend Arizona State University, where she earned a BA in English. harris spent the next several years working with grassroots organizing projects for community radio, social justice, and queer performing arts while facilitating poetry workshops for young people and practicing visual art. harris moved back to Detroit in 2002. In 2011, she earned an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded a Zell Fellowship.

harris is the author of here Is the sweet hand (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020), play dead (2016), and allegiance (2012), a finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, including McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Poetry, Meridian, Indiana Review, Callaloo, and Boston Review. A 2008 Cave Canem fellow, she has also won the 2014 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest and was awarded a 2015 NEA fellowship.

Source: PoetryFoundation.org

Douglas Kearney has published seven books, most recently, Sho (Wave Books, 2021), a National Book Award, Pen American, and Minnesota Book Award finalist. Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), is the winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry).

His work is widely anthologized, including Best American Poetry (2014, 2015), Best American Experimental Writing (2014), Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Culture and Literature, The Creative Critic: Writing As/About Practice, What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World, The Future of Black, and Conceptualisms.

Source: DouglasKearney.com

Diane Seuss was born in Indiana and raised in Michigan. She earned a BA from Kalamazoo College and an MSW from Western Michigan University. Seuss is the author of the poetry collections Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (2018); Four-Legged Girl (2015), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (2010), winner of the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry; and It Blows You Hollow (1998). Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988.

Source: PoetryFoundation.org

Born in the Mekong Delta, Hoa Nguyen was raised and educated in the United States and has lived in Canada since 2011. Hoa has had the privilege to work and teach all over the United States and Canada, and share her unique perspective through her poetry. She is the author of several books including As Long As Trees Last, Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008, and Violet Energy Ingots which received a 2017 Griffin Prize nomination. Her fifth book of poems, A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure was named a finalist for a Kingsley Tufts Award, National Book Award, and the Governor General’s Literary Award.

Source: Hao-Nguyen.com

Diamond Forde's debut collection, Mother Body, is the winner of the 2019 Saturnalia Poetry Prize. She has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Pink Poetry Prize, the Furious Flower Poetry Prize, and CLA's Margaret Walker Memorial Prize, and placed in the Frontier Poetry's New Poets Award.

She is a Callaloo and Tin House fellow, whose work has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, NELLE, Tupelo Quarterly, and more. Diamond serves as the assistant editor of Southeast Review, and the fiction editor for Nat. Brut.

Source: DiamondForde.com

Threa Almontaser is a Yemeni American writer, translator, and multimedia artist from New York City. She holds an MFA from North Carolina State University.

Her first full-length poetry collection, The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf Press, 2021), was selected by Harryette Mullen as the winner of the 2020 Walt Whitman Award, given by the Academy of American Poets and was long-listed for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry.

Source: Poets.org

Benjamin Garcia’s debut collection, Thrown in the Throat, was selected by Kazim Ali for the 2019 National Poetry Series (Milkweed Editions, August 2020).

Benjamin Garcia is the son of Mexican immigrants, one of whom is formerly undocumented and one whose family has lived in New Mexico long before it was claimed by the United States. He is originally from New Mexico, raised in Texas, and currently lives in New York. He received his BA from the University of New Mexico and his MFA from Cornell University.

Source: BenjaminGarciaPoet.com

Desiree C. Bailey is the author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press, 2021), which won the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O'clock Press, 2016) and has short stories and poems published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, the Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. Desiree is from Trinidad and Tobago, and Queens, New York. She lives in Providence, RI.

Source: DesireeCBailey.com