Kathryn Stripling Byer received the 2013 North Carolina Book Award and the 2013 Southern Independent Booksellers Award for Poetry for her most recent collection, Descent (Louisiana State University Press, 2012). A native of south Georgia, she recently completed five years as North Carolina’s first woman poet laureate. Frequently anthologized, her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications ranging from the Atlantic to Appalachian Heritage.

Andrea Hollander’s first published poem appeared in the Winter 1982 issue of The Georgia Review. Her first full-length poetry collection won the 1993 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize; her fourth was a finalist for the 2014 Oregon Book Award. Her many other honors include two Pushcart Prizes (in poetry and creative nonfiction) and two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. After living in the woods of the Arkansas Ozarks for thirty-five years, she moved to downtown Portland, Oregon, in 2011.