CM Burroughs is associate professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago and author of The Vital System (Tupelo, 2012) and Master Suffering (Tupelo, 2021), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Cave Canem’s Gathering Ground, and Best American Experimental Writing. Burroughs has received fellowships and grants from Yaddo, MacDowell, and Cave Canem Foundation, among others.

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet. Her work has been featured in Poetry, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, Poem-a-Day on Poets.org, and elsewhere. She is the author of I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks, 2019) and THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (The Accomplices, 2016). She holds an MFA in poetry from UC Riverside and is currently a professor of creative writing.

Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), two self-published collections, and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019). A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Houston Public Media, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, New England Review, Write About Now, and elsewhere.

Dorianne Laux’s most recent collection is Life on Earth (W. W. Norton, 2024). A Pulitzer Prize finalist, she is also the author of Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems; The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize; and Facts About the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award. A textbook titled Finger Exercises for Poets was released in July 2024. Laux is founding faculty at Pacific University and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.