Suzanne Cleary won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry for her third book, Beauty Mark (BkMk Press, 2013). Recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she teaches in the low-residency MFA in creative writing program at Converse College.

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.

Jim Daniels is the author of numerous poetry books, including the forthcoming The Middle Ages (Red Mountain Press, 2018), Rowling Inland (Wayne State University Press, 2017), and Street Calligraphy (Steel Toe Books, 2017). A native of Detroit, Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.

William Trowbridge’s latest collection, Put This On, Please: New and Selected Poems, was published in March 2013 by Red Hen Press. His other collections include Ship of Fool (Red Hen, 2011), and The Complete Book of Kong (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2003). His poems have appeared in more than thirty-five anthologies and textbooks, as well as on The Writer’s Almanac and in such periodicals as Poetry and the Gettysburg Review. Currently poet laureate of Missouri, Trowbridge lives in the Kansas City area and teaches in the University of Nebraska low-residency MFA in writing program.