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.

Alice Friman’s seventh collection of poetry is Blood Weather, forthcoming from Louisiana State University Press in 2019. She’s the winner of a Pushcart Prize and is included in Best American Poetry. New work is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Plume, Shenandoah, Western Humanities Review, and others. She lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she was poet-in-residence at Georgia College and State University.