Margaret Gibson is the current poet laureate of Connecticut and the author of twelve books of poems, all from Louisiana State University Press, most recently Not Hearing the Wood Thrush (2018) and The Glass Globe (forthcoming in 2021), as well as a memoir, The Prodigal Daughter (University of Missouri Press, 2008). The Vigil (1993) was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry; Broken Cup (2016) was a finalist for the Poets’ Prize, and its title poem won a Pushcart Prize that year. Gibson is professor emerita at the University of Connecticut.

Melanie McCabe’s work has appeared on Poetry Daily, as well as in Best New Poets 2010, The Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Cincinnati Review, and Shenandoah; her collection History of the Body will be published by WordTech Communications in 2012. McCabe teaches high school English and creative writing in Arlington, Virginia.

William Johnson is the author of three poetry collections, including Out of the Ruins (Confluence Press, 1999), chosen as the Idaho Book of the Year; What Thoreau Said (1991), a critical study of Walden; and, most recently, the essay collection A River without Banks (Oregon State University Press, 2010). He has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, served twice as Idaho Writer-in-Residence, the state’s highest literary honor, and is professor emeritus at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.

Pattiann Rogers has published fourteen books of poetry, most recently Holy Heathen Rhapsody (Penguin, 2013), and a selection of her uncollected poems is forthcoming from Penguin/Random House in 2018. A gathering of 329 journals and magazines containing her poems was recently acquired by Texas Tech University and is housed in the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community, and the Natural World.

Kyoko Uchida’s poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in The Georgia Review, Manoa, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and other journals on three continents; her poetry collection Elsewhere was published by Texas Tech University Press in 2012. Uchida works for a nonprofit organization in New York City.

Richard Jackson has published fifteen books of poems and is the author or editor of multiple critical monographs, books in translation, and anthologies. His most recent books are Broken Horizons (Press 53, 2018) and Out of Place (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014); “Take Five,” a prose poetry project with four other poets, is forthcoming.

Adrian Blevins’ full-length poetry collections are The Brass Girl Brouhaha (Ausable Press, 2003), a winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Live from the Homesick Jamboree (Wesleyan University Press, 2009). Her other honors include a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Award for The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes (1996). Blevins directs the creative writing program at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.