Susan Ludvigson, Professor Emerita at Winthrop University, was the 2014 winner of the James Dickey Prize for Poetry from Five Points magazine. She has published eight collections of poems with LSU Press, including Escaping the House of Certainty (2006). The first line of “Dead,” appearing here, is the title of her next collection. Most recently, her poems can be found in the Yale Review and the Southern Review.

Cathy Smith Bowers’ collections of poetry include Like Shining from Shook Foil (2010), The Candle I Hold Up to See You (2009), and A Book of Minutes (2004), and her poems have appeared in publications such as Poetry, the Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares. For many years the poet-in-residence at Queens University of Charlotte, Bowers currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Queens and in the Haden Institute Spiritual Direction and Dream Leadership programs. From 2010 to 2012, she was poet laureate of North Carolina.

Gerald Stern’s most recent books are a collection of poems, In Beauty Bright (W. W. Norton, 2012), and a book of essays, Stealing History (Trinity University, 2012). This Time: New and Selected Poems (1998) won the National Book Award, and his numerous other honors include the Ruth Lilly Prize and the Wallace Stevens Award. Stern taught for many years at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and he served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2005–2011.