Jennifer Michael Hecht, Deborah Landau, Candace Williams
Jennifer Michael Hecht’s most recent poetry book is Who Said (Copper Canyon, 2013). Her first book of poetry, The Next Ancient World (Tupelo Press, 2001), won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book award; and Publisher’s Weekly called her second, Funny, “One of the most original and entertaining books of the year.” Hecht’s poetry appears in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Times, and is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review. She has a PhD in History from Columbia University and is the author of Doubt: A History (HarperOne, 2003), a history of religious and philosophical doubt, all over the world throughout time; and Stay (Yale, 2013), a history of suicide and the arguments against it. She is now writing “The Wonder Paradox,” on poetry and meaning in today’s world, for Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (Spring 2018). She lives in Brooklyn.
Photo credit Sarah Shatz
Deborah Landau is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently The Uses of the Body, a Lannan Literary Selection from Copper Canyon Press which was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and included on “Best of 2015” lists by The New Yorker, Vogue, BuzzFeed, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Best American Poetry. In 2016 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches in and directs the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
Candace Williams is the author of Spells for Black Wizards, winner of the TAR Chapbook Series and forthcoming from The Atlas Review in 2017. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hyperallergic, Sixth Finch, Bennington Review, Lambda Literary Review, and Copper Nickel, among other journals. She holds a BA from Claremont McKenna College with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) and earned her MA in Elementary Education from Stanford University. She’s been awarded a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, Cave Canem scholarships, and a Best of the Net 2016 nomination. You can find her walking her pit bull down Nostrand Ave, watching too many episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and subtweeting the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (@teacherc).
A. Balkano is the author of The Book of Dumb, a fiction, and Bring the Gnar, a non-. He lives with his family in the U.S.A. 
Valerie Hsiung is the author of efg (exchange following and gene flow): a trilogy (Action Books, forthcoming 2016), incantation inarticulate (O Balthazar Press, 2013), and under your face (O Balthazar Press, 2013). Her writing appears or is forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Cosmonauts Avenue, Denver Quarterly, New Delta Review, PEN Poetry Series, Prelude, RealPoetik, and VOLT, among others. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hsiung spent significant portions of her childhood in Las Vegas, received a BA from Brown University, and is now based out of Brooklyn, New York, where she works as a love detective and matchmaker. She is also an editor for Poor Claudia.
Billy Merrell published his first book of poems, Talking in the Dark, with Scholastic in 2003, at the age of 21. Since then, he has received his MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, co-edited (with David Levithan) the Lambda Literary Award-winning nonfiction anthology The Full Spectrum, and served as web developer for Poets.org, providing web analysis and content strategy for the Academy of American Poets website. He is a contributor to the New York Times-bestselling children’s series Spirit Animals. Merrell’s newest book, Vanilla, a novel in poems, is forthcoming from Scholastic in Fall of 2017.
Kamilah Aisha Moon’s work has been featured widely, including Harvard Review, Oxford American, and Prairie Schooner. Her poetry collection, She Has a Name (Four Way Books, 2013), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award from the Publishing Triangle. A Pushcart Prize winner and a 2015 New American Poet presented by the Poetry Society of America, Moon has taught English and Creative Writing for many organizations and institutions, most recently as a Visiting Professor at Rutgers-Newark. Her next poetry collection is forthcoming in 2017 from Four Way Books.
Tanya Olson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland and is a Lecturer in English at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Her first book, Boyishly, was published by YesYes Books in 2013 and was awarded a 2014 American Book Award. She has also won the Discovery/Boston Review prize and was named a Lambda Emerging Writers Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation. Her poem “54 Prince” was included in Best American Poetry 2015.
KMA Sullivan is the author of Necessary Fire, winner of the St Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Southern Humanities Review, Forklift, Ohio, The Nervous Breakdown, Gertrude, diode, and elsewhere. Recent essays have appeared in The Rumpus, The Good Men Project, and Nailed. She has been awarded residencies in creative nonfiction and poetry at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Summer Literary Seminars and she is the editor-in-chief of Vinyl Poetry and the publisher at YesYes Books.
Ocean Vuong is the author of Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), winner of the 2016 Whiting Award. 
Thomas Dooley is the author of Trespass (Harper Perennial, 2014), a National Poetry Series selection. His poetry, collaborations and interviews have appeared widely, most notably on NPR, Poets & Writers, Academy of American Poets and “PBS NewsHour.” Thomas is the Artistic Director of Emotive Fruition, an organization where actors collaborate with poets to bring poetry to life on stage. A member of the creative writing faculty at New York University, Thomas lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY.
Lawrence Kaplun is completing his first manuscript of poems. His poems and essays have appeared in the Gay & Lesbian Review, Lambda Literary, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sonora Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.
Danniel Schoonebeek is the author of American Barricade (YesYes Books, 2014), the travelogue C’est la guerre (Poor Claudia, 2016), and the forthcoming collection of poems Trébuchet, which was a 2015 National Poetry Series selection and will be published by University of Georgia Press in 2016. Recent work appears in The New Yorker, Fence, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
Valerie Hsiung is the author of efg (exchange following and gene flow): a trilogy (Action Books, forthcoming 2016), incantation inarticulate (O Balthazar Press, 2013), and under your face (O Balthazar Press, 2013). Her writing appears or is forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Cosmonauts Avenue, Denver Quarterly, New Delta Review, PEN Poetry Series, Prelude, RealPoetik, and VOLT, among others. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hsiung spent significant portions of her childhood in Las Vegas, received a BA from Brown University, and is now based out of Brooklyn, New York, where she works as a love detective and matchmaker. She is also an editor for Poor Claudia.
Quraysh Ali Lansana is a prolific poet, writer, and editor. His most recent books include The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop, co-edited with Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall (Haymarket Books, 2015) and The Walmart Republic, a collaboration with poet Christopher Stewart (Mongrel Empire Press, 2014). Forthcoming titles include: A Gift from Greensboro (Penny Candy Books, 2016); Clara Luper: The Woman Who Rallied the Children, a collaboration with Julie Dill (Oklahoma Hall of Fame Press, 2017); Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writings of Gwendolyn Brooks, co-edited with Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Curbside Splendor, 2017) and The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent, co-edited with Georgia A. Popoff (Haymarket Books, 2017). He is a faculty member of the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community (with Georgia A. Popoff) was published in March 2011 by Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was a 2012 NAACP Image Award nominee.
Julie Marie Wade latest poetry collection, Six (Red Hen Press, 2016), was selected by C.D. Wright as the winner of the AROHO/To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize. Her earlier books of poetry include When I Was Straight (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014) and Catechism: A Love Story (Noctuary Press, 2010). Her lyric essay collection, Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books, 2014), won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir. Julie teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University and reviews regularly for The Rumpus and Lambda Literary Review. She is married to Angie Griffin and lives on Hollywood Beach.
Matthew Yeager is the author of Like That (H_NGM_N Books, 2016). His poems have appeared in Sixthfinch, Gulf Coast, Minnesota Review, Bat City Review, and elsewhere, as well as in The Best American Poetry 2005 and The Best American Poetry 2010. His short film “A Big Ball of Foil in a Small NY Apartment” was an official selection at thirteen film festivals, picking up three awards. Other distinctions include the Barthelme Prize in short prose and two MacDowell fellowships. With John Deming, he is the co-curator of the long running KGB Monday Night Poetry Series.
Truck Darling studied at Cambridge and Oxford Universities before receiving his MFA from Naropa University. His first publication during graduate school was A Valentine to Frank O’Hara published by Erudite Fangs in conjunction with Smokeproof Press in 1999. Since then he has published four books: The Heart’s Filthy Lesson with drawings by Jo Jackson (Angry Dog Press, 2000); The Pill Book (XY Press, 2002), Blue Collar Holiday with Larry Rivers (Hanging Loose Press 2005), and Hold Tight: The Truck Darling Poems (Hanging Loose Press, 2010). His work has also been published in German translation, Ich Habe Angst um Meinem Hedgefonds (luxbooks, 2002). In 2004 and 2011, Darling’s work was included in The Best American Poetry (Scribner) and the Free Radicals anthology by Subpress.
Adam DeGraff has published several chapbooks and has a new book of selected poems on Subpress called Wherewithal, edited by Anselm Berrigan. Along with Tyler Burba, Adam hosts the reading series at the SculptureCenter in LIC called Kith & Kin. He lives in Sunnyside Queens with his wife and two daughters.
José Olivarez is the co-author of the poetry collection Home Court. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the Program Director at Urban Word NYC. A winner of the 2016 Poets House Emerging Poet Fellowship and a 2015 Bronx Recognizes Its Own award from the Bronx Council on the Arts, his work has been published in The BreakBeat Poets, Vinyl Poetry, Specter Magazine, and Union Station Magazine, among other places. His work has also been featured on Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie basketball blog, Chicago Public Radio, and on Mass Poetry’s PoeTry on the T program. He is from Calumet City, Illinois, and he lives in the Bronx. You can purchase Home Court at 
Celeste Gainey is the author of the poetry collection, the GAFFER, (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2015). Her chapbook, In the land of speculation & seismography (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011), was runner-up for the 2010 Robin Becker Prize. Graduating with a BFA in Film & Television from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, as well as earning an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Carlow University, Gainey was the first woman to be admitted to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) as a gaffer, and has spent many years working with light in film and architecture. For more information visit 
Sarah Wetzel is the author of River Electric with Light (Red Hen Press, 2015), winner of the 2013 AROHO Poetry Publication Prize. Her first book, Bathsheba Transatlantic (Anhinga Press, 2010), won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Sarah holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington. Dividing time between Tel Aviv, Rome, and New York, Sarah currently teaches literature at The American University of Rome. Samples of her writings can be found in many journals as well as 
Michael Broder is the author of Drug and Disease Free (Indolent Books) and This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Assaracus, BLOOM, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, OCHO, Painted Bride Quarterly, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies This New Breed: Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians 2, My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS, Divining Divas: 50 Gay Men on Their Muses, and Multilingual Anthology: The Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2015. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, and a backyard colony of stray and feral cats. Learn more at 
Lisa Marie Basile is the author of Apocryphal (SUNY Buffalo, 2014), Andalucia (The Poetry Society, 2011) and war/lock (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014). She is the editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine and her poetry and other work can be seen in PANK, the Tin House blog, The Nervous Breakdown, The Huffington Post, Best American Poetry, PEN American Center, Dusie, and the Ampersand Review, among others. She’s been profiled in The New York Daily News, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, Poets & Artists Magazine, Relapse Magazine and others. Lisa Marie Basile holds an MFA from The New School. Follow her on 
Laura McCullough’s most recent books include Jersey Mercy, poems, Black Lawrence Press, and an edited anthology, A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race, University of Georgia press. Her other books of poetry include, Rigger Death & Hoist Another (BLP), Panic (winner of the Kinereth Genseler Award, Alice James Books), Speech Acts (BLP), What Men Want (XOXOX Press), and The Dancing Bear (Open Book Press). She edited The Room and the World: Essays on the Poet Stephen Dunn, University of Syracuse press. Her essays, memoirs, stories, and poetry have appeared widely in places such as Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, The American Poetry Review, Guernica, Pank, Gulf Coast, The Writer’s Chronicle, Best American Poetry, and others. She has had fellowships or scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Sewanee Writers Conference, the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference, the Virginia Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, Marble House, and the NJ State Arts Council, among others. She teaches full time at Brookdale Community College in NJ, is on the faculty of the Sierra Nevada low-res MFA, and has taught for Ramapo College and Stockton University. She is the founding editor of Mead: the Magazine of Literature and Libations. Visit her at