Vladimir Korvin-Piotrovsky (1891–1966) was a Ukrainian-born Russian-language poet who spent most of his life in emigration. After serving in the Imperial Army during the First World War and in the White Army during the Civil War, he fled Soviet Russia in 1920 and wound up in Berlin, where he married and had a son. At the start of the Second World War, the family left for Paris, where the poet took active part in the French Resistance and was arrested and jailed for several months in 1944. The family immigrated to the United States in 1961, settling in Los Angeles, where Korvin-Piotrovsky passed away five years later.

Boris Dralyuk is the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is co-editor (with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski) of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015), editor of 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution (Pushkin Press, 2016), and translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and other authors. His poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Criterion, The Yale Review, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere, and his collection My Hollywood and Other Poems will appear with Paul Dry Books in 2022.

Tafisha A. Edwards is the author of two chapbooks: In the Belly of the Mirror (Telemagenta Press, 2021) and The Bloodlet (Phantom Books, 2016). She is poetry editor at Gigantic Sequins and has published work in Poetry Northwest, Washington Square Review, Apogee, Sundress Publications’ Lyric Essentials series, The Volta, and elsewhere.

David Roderick’s poetry collection, The Americans, was published by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2014. Recently awarded a 2021–22 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he is the director of content at The Adroit Journal and co-directs Left Margin LIT, a creative writing center in Berkeley, California.

Kevin McIlvoy’s poems appear in Consequence, Willow Springs, Olney, Barzakh, River Heron Review, and LEON Literary Review. His novel One Kind Favor is now out from WTAW Press. He has published five other novels: At the Gate of All Wonder (Tupelo Press, 2018), Hyssop (TriQuarterly, 1990), Little Peg (Atheneum Books, 1987), The Fifth Station (Algonquin Books, 1985), and A Waltz (Lynx House Press, 1981); a short-story collection, The Complete History of New Mexico and Other Stories (Graywolf Press, 2008); and a collection of short stories and prose poems, 57 Octaves Below Middle C (Four Way Books, 2017).

Ae Hee Lee was born in South Korea, raised in Peru, and currently lives in Milwaukee. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Dear bear, (Platypus Press, 2021) and Bedtime || Riverbed (Compound Press, 2017). Most recently, her work Connotary was selected as the winner for the 2021 Frost Place Chapbook by Tiana Clark. She holds an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Her poetry has been published by or is forthcoming from New England Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. 

Michael Collier is the author of eight poetry collections, including The Missing Mountain: New and Selected Poems (forthcoming from University of Chicago Press in August 2021). He has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and has received numerous honors, including a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a professor of English at the University of Maryland and emeritus director of the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences.

Bruce Bond’s twenty-eight books include Calling (Parlor Press, 2021); Behemoth (Criterion Books, 2021), winner of the New Criterion poetry prize; Patmos (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021), winner of the Juniper Prize; Scar (Etruscan Press, 2020); Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019); and Words Written Against the Walls of the City (Louisiana State University Press, 2019). His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including seven editions of Best American Poetry.

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008) and Some Say the Lark (Alice James Books, 2017), which received the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award. She is the poetry editor of the New England Review, co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, and will begin teaching at the University of Texas in Austin this fall.