John Stone (1936–2008) was a four-time Georgia Writer of the Year, a 1992 recipient of the Georgia Governor’s Award in the Humanities, and an honored emeritus professor of cardiology at the Emory University School of Medicine. Beginning in 1969, he attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Vermont, where he served as resident physician for three summers. His first book of poetry, The Smell of Matches (1972), was followed by In All This Rain (1980), Renaming the Streets (1985), Where Water Begins (1998), and Music from Apartment 8 (2004). Stone was also an acclaimed essayist—his collection In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine (1990) earned Stone his fourth Georgia Writer of the Year Award, and his first for nonfiction. He died in Atlanta in 2008. (Inducted in 2007)

Dave Smith is the Elliott Coleman Professor of Poetry in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His newest book of poems, Hawks on Wires, is forthcoming from LSU Press this fall. Along with Robert DeMott, he edited the essay anthology Afield: Writers on Bird Dogs (Skyhorse Press, 2010).