Regie Cabico is a spoken-word pioneer who has won the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam and is a three-time National Poetry Slam finalist. The author of A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex and other hyperboles, mysteries, parables and fantasias (Day Eight Press), Cabico is also the producer and publisher of Capturing Fire Slam and Press. He lives in Washington, D.C.

C. Dale Young is the author of the novel The Affliction (Four Way Books, 2018) and five collections of poetry. In early 2025, Four Way Books will publish Building the Perfect Animal: New & Selected Poems (1993–2023). He practices medicine full-time and teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Laura Mullen is the William R. Kenan Jr. Chair in the Humanities at Wake Forest University. Her poetry has been anthologized in collections from Norton, Wesleyan, and elsewhere; recent work has appeared in Harvard Review, Court Green, and Bennington Review, and poems are forthcoming in The Lincoln Review and Volt. Solid Objects Press will publish her ninth collection, EtC, in November 2023.

Shaina Phenix is a Black, queer poet, essayist, and educator from Harlem, New York. She is the author of To Be Named Something Else (University of Arkansas Press, 2023), winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, Glass Poetry, Foglifter Press, The Pinch Journal, Puerto del Sol, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere.

Samuel Amadon’s recent books are Often, Common, Some, and Free (Omnidawn, 2021) and Listener (Solid Objects, 2020). He directs the MFA program in creative writing at the University of South Carolina, where he edits, with Liz Countryman, the poetry journal Oversound.