Julie Bruck is the author How to Avoid Huge Ships (Brick Books, 2018). Her book Monkey Ranch (Brick Books, 2012), received the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. Recent work has appeared in Plume, The New Yorker, Poetry Daily, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, and The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry. Julie hails from Montreal and has lived in San Francisco for over 20 years. (Photo by James Chan.)
Gerry LaFemina is the author most recently of the poetry collection The Story of Ash (Anhinga Press, 2018). He is also the author of a novel, a collection of short stories, and numerous award-winning collections of poetry, including The Parakeets of Brooklyn, Notes for the Novice Ventriloquist, Vanishing Horizon, and Little Heretic. He has also written a collection of essays on poets and prosody, Palpable Magic, (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2015), and a textbook, Composing Poetry: A Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically (Kendall Hunt, 2016). He teaches at Frostburg State University and serves as a Poetry Mentor in the MFA Program at Carlow University.
Valerie Wallace is the author of House of McQueen (Four Way Books, 2018), selected by Vievee Francis for the 2016 Four Way Books Intro Prize, and the chapbook The Dictators’ Guide to Good Housekeeping (Dancing Girl Press). She has received numerous awards and grants. Valerie lives in Chicago, where she teaches with the City Colleges of Chicago. She has served as an associate editor and webmaster with RHINO from 2010-2016, and as a mentor with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.