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.

David Wagoner has published nineteen books of poems—most recently After the Point of No Return (Copper Canyon Press, 2012)—and ten novels, including The Escape Artist (1965), which Francis Ford Coppola made into a movie in 1982. Winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and many other honors, he was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets for twenty-three years, edited Poetry Northwest from 1966 to 2002, and is professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington. He teaches in the low-residency MFA program of the Whidbey Island Writers Workshop.