makalani bandele is the author of under the aegis of a winged mind (Autumn House Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. He is an MFA in Poetry candidate at the University of Kentucky and resides in Lexington, Kentucky.

Writing under the pseudonym Bernard James, James Bernard Short is an emerging short fiction writer, essayist, and poet. His singular ambition as an artist is to produce smart, expressive, and culturally authentic content that captures the wide spectrum of aspirations and challenges encountered by persons of color. James’ work has appeared in Callaloo, The New Guard, Auburn Avenue, Blood Orange Review, The McNeese Review, and SmokeLong Quarterly among other literary journals and publications. He is a 2018/2017/2016 Kimbilio Fellow, and a 2015 Givens Writing Fellow. James holds degrees from Northwestern and The University of St. Thomas. He currently resides in the Twin Cities.

Sawako Nakayasu’s recent books are Some Girls Walk Into The Country They Are From (Wave Books), Pink Waves (forthcoming, Omnidawn), and The Ants. Translations include The Collected Poems of Sagawa Chika, and Tatsumi Hijikata’s Costume en Face. Other books include Hurry Home Honey, and Mouth: Eats Color — Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals, a multilingual work of original and translated poetry. She has received fellowships from the NEA and PEN, and her own work has been translated into multiple languages. Sawako Nakayasu has also made numerous performances and one short film. Nakayasu’s translations of Chika Sagawa are included in the Rail Park installation “Dawn Chorus.”

Sasha Smith is a Jamaican-American Bronxite poet and lecturer that currently lives and works in Ithaca, NY. Sasha is a 2019 Cornell MFA graduate. She holds degrees from New York University and CUNY. Previous work has been published in Black Warrior Review, The Southampton Review and Poet’s Country. She is a recipient of the 2016 Poetry Project’s Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship. Details about her work can be found at https://stesseract.com.

Ron Silliman has written and edited 24 books to date, including the anthology In the American Tree, which the National Poetry Foundation has republished with a new afterword. Since 1979, Silliman has been writing a poem entitled The Alphabet. Volumes published thus far from that project have included ABC, Demo to Ink, Jones, Lit, Manifest, N/O, Paradise, (R), Toner, What and Xing. Silliman is a 2003 Literary fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts in 1998. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons, and works as a market analyst in the computer industry.

Rodrigo Toscano’s newest book of poetry is In Range (Counterpath Press 2019). Previous books include Explosion Rocks Springfield, Deck of Deeds, Collapsible Poetics Theater (a National Poetry Series selection), and others.His poetry has appeared in the anthologies Voices Without Borders, Diasporic Avant Gardes, Imagined Theatres, Dialectical Imaginaries, Earth Bound, and Best American Poetry. He works for the Labor Institute as a national project director, strategizing around issues that involve environmental and labor culture transformation.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of twenty books of poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. He is a Tulsa Artist Fellow, Writer in Residence and Adjunct Professor at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. Lansana is executive producer of KOSU/NPR’s Focus: Black Oklahoma, and his forthcoming titles include Those Who Stayed: Life in 1921 Tulsa After the Massacre and Opal’s Greenwood Oasis. He is a member of Tri-City Collective.

Natasha Kessler is the author of Dismantling the Rabbit Altar and the collaborative chapbook SDVIG (alice blue books). She received an MFA from the University of Nebraska, and her work has appeared in journals such as South Dakota Review, Sugar House Review, Sixth Finch, and Puerto del Sol, among others.

María Montero is a poet, essayist and designer working in San José, Costa Rica. She has written two collections of poetry: El juego conquistado which was awarded the Premio de Joven Creación and La mano suicida. Her most recent collection of essays, “semblanzas” and profiles is entitled fieras domésticas. Montero has also collaborated with the photographer, José Diaz, to curate and introduce the art book, Vanguardia popular. Her work has been anthologized both nationally and internationally in Relatos de mujeres, Indómitas voces -100 años de poesía femenina costarricense, Martes de poesía en el cuartel de la boca del monte, Lunadas poéticas: poesía costarricense actual and, finally, Sostener la palabra: Antología de poesía costarricense contemporánea. She has just completed a series of prints called Grandes Sobras del Feminismo Sucio for the Biblioteca Textil Centroamericana. Montero lives with her three children in Escazú. This is the first time her work has been translated from Spanish to English.

Julia Guez is the author of In an Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also a Frame (Four Way Books, 2019). Her poetry, prose and translations have appeared in Poetry, Guernica, The Guardian, Kenyon Review, PEN Poetry Series and the Brooklyn Rail. Guez has been awarded the Discovery /Boston Review Poetry Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship and the John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation. She teaches creative writing at Rutgers, as well as NYU, and works at Teach For America New York. Guez lives in Brooklyn and online at www.juliaguez.net.

Lucy Alford is the author of Forms of Poetic Attention (Columbia University Press, 2020) assistant professor of literature at Wake Forest University. Her poems have appeared in Harpur Palate, Literary Matters, the Warwick Review, Streetlight, and Atelier. Her scholarly work has been published in Philosophy & Literature, Dibur, and Modern Language Notes.

Kristen Brida's poetry has appeared in The Journal, Barrelhouse, Fairy Tale Review, Hobart, Whiskey Island, Pidgeonholes, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from George Mason University.

Joanna C. Valente is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015) Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016), Sexting Ghosts (Unknown Press, 2018), No(body) (Madhouse Press, 2019), and #Survivor (The Operating System, 2020). They are the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing By Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). Joanna is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.

Jesse Seldess is the author of Several Rotations (2019), Left Having (2011), Who Opens (2006), and several chapbooks. From 2001 to 2012, he edited and published the international journal of writing, music, and performance Antennae, and from 2003 to 2007, he co-curated the Chicago reading and performance series Discrete Series with Kerri Sonnenberg. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Fritz Ward is the author of Tsunami Diorama (The Word Works, 2017) and the chapbook Doppelganged (Blue Hour Press, 2011). His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, BOAAT, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. He works at Swarthmore College and lives just outside of Philadelphia.

Fanny Howe is the author of more than 30 books of poetry and prose, including Night Philosophy (2020), Love and I (2019), and Second Childhood (2014). Night Philosophy, the latest book by Fanny Howe, is collected around the figure of the child, the figure of the child not just as a little person under the tutelage of adults, but also the submerged one, who knows, who doesn’t matter. The book proposes a minor politics that disperses all concentrations of power. Her stories, meditations and fragments are woven together with passages by Samuel Beckett, Marilyn Buck, Henia and Ilona Karmel, the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and literary ephemera to explore violence, survival and vulnerability.

Howe was the recipient of the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and won the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, and the California Council for the Arts. She has received fellowships from the Bunting Institute and MacArthur. She was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2001 and 2005. She has lectured in creative writing at Tufts University, Emerson College, Columbia University, Yale University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is currently a professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Chris Santiago is the author of Tula, selected by A. Van Jordan as the winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, and a finalist for the 2017 Minnesota Book Award. A 2018 McKnight Writing Fellow, his poems, fiction, and criticism have appeared in FIELD, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and the Asian American Literary Review. Say Home, a collaboration with composer Lembit Beecher, received its world premiere by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in February 2019. He is Associate Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas where he teaches creative writing and Asian American literature.

Celina Su was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and lives in Brooklyn. Her first book of poetry, Landia, was published by Belladonna* in 2018. Her writing includes two poetry chapbooks, three books on the politics of social policy and civil society, and pieces in journals such as n+1, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. Su is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.

Caroline Crew is the author of PINK MUSEUM (Big Lucks, 2015), as well as several chapbooks. Her poetry and essays appear in Conjunctions, Salt Hill Journal, and Black Warrior Review, among others. She’s online here: caroline-crew.com.

Carlie Hoffman is the author This Alaska (Four Way Books, 2021). Her second collection is also forthcoming with Four Way Books in 2023. A poet and translator, her honors include a 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize and a Poet's & Writers Amy Award. Carlie is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Small Orange Journal and is an Instructor of Creative Writing at Purchase College, SUNY.

Bob Perelman is the author of 14 poetry collections, including JACK AND JILL IN TROY, IFLIFE, Virtual Reality, The First World and Ten to One: Selected Poems. He collaborated with his wife, the painter Francie Shaw, on Playing Bodies. His latest critical book is Modernism the Morning After. He taught at UPenn for 25 years and now lives in Berkeley.

Adam Vines is the author of three single-authored books of poetry — Lures (LSU, 2022) Out of Speech (LSU, 2018) and The Coal Life (University of Arkansas Press, 2012)— and two collaborative poetry collections written with Allen Jih: Day Kink (Unicorn Press, 2018) and According to Discretion (Unicorn Press, 2015). He has won awards for his teaching from the University of Florida and at UAB, where he is an associate professor in the English Department. He is editor of Birmingham Poetry Review and faculty advisor for the UAB Fishing Team. An avid fisherman, he has published poetry in Poetry, Southwest Review, The Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Barrow Street, The Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, The Literary Review, Five Points, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Verse Daily, and Poetry Daily, and others.