Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, most recently I Love Artists: New and Selected Poems (University of California Press, 2006) and Concordance (Kelsey St. Press, 2006), a collaboration with the sculptor Kiki Smith. Her other collections include Nest (2003); The Four Year Old Girl (1998); Endocrinology (1997), a collaboration with Kiki Smith; Sphericity (1993); Empathy (1989); and The Heat Bird (1983). Characteristic of her style is a lush mix of abstract language, collaged images, cultural and political investigation, and unexpected shifts between the meditative and the particular. Berssenbrugge is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two American Book Awards, and honors from the Asian American Writers Workshop and the Western States Art Foundation.  She lives in New Mexico and New York City with her husband, the sculptor Richard Tuttle, and their daughter.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, and Small Gods of Grief which won the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry for 2001. Her third poetry collection, A New Hunger, was selected as an ALA Notable Book in 2008.  She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her poems have appeared in reviews such as The Washington Post, Georgia Review, Ploughshares, AGNI, Harvard Review, and many others.  She is the editor of four anthologies: Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars, Outsiders: Poems about Rebels, Exiles and Renegades, Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the Cities, and Never Before: Poems About First Experiences.  She translates American poetry into French and Flemish poetry into English. With her husband, poet Kurt Brown, she translated a selection of poems entitled The Plural of Happiness, by the Flemish poet, critic and essayist Herman de Coninck. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at the Low Residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College.

Kurt Brown founded of the Aspen Writers' Conference, and Writers' Conferences & Centers (a national association of directors). His poems have appeared in many literary periodicals, and he is the editor of several anthologies including Blues for Bill, for the late William Matthews, from University of Akron Press and his newest (with Harold Schechter), Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems from Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series. He is the author of six chapbooks and five full-length collections of poetry, including Return of the Prodigals, More Things in Heaven and Earth, Fables from the Ark, Future Ship, and a new collection, No Other Paradise, due out in 2008 from Red Hen Press. A collection of the poems of Flemish poet Herman de Coninck entitled The Plural of Happiness, which he and his wife translated, was released in the Field Translation Series in 2006. He teaches poetry workshops and craft classes at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and was recently the McEver Visiting Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia.

Lynn Emanuel  is the author of three books of poetry, Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, and Then, Suddenly-- which was awarded the Eric Matthieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets. Her work has been featured in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Poetry numerous times and is included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.  She has been a judge for the National Book Awards and has taught at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, The Warren Wilson Program in Creative Writing, and the Bennington College Low Residency MFA program.  Currently, she is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

Providence, Rhode Island's Sage Francis first captured the underground consciousness with a furious tape-only release, Homegrown Demo (1996), and then achieved renown as the country's best freestyle rapper by winning 1999's Superbowl Battle and 2000's Scribble Jam title.  Where conformity ends, Sage Francis begins. Sage drove his distinctiveness home on his first official release, 2002's Personal Journals, a pioneering manifesto for the poetically introspective style that has come to dominate underground rap.  2003's Hope was its polar opposite, a joyous affirmation of Sage's love for the Golden Era.  2005's A Healthy Distrust (Epitaph)was his album-long screed against the state of the world. On that album, Sage was an activist in the purest sense of the term - a person whose words and deeds inspire others to effect positive change at every level: personally, locally, and globally.  Sage's website chronicles corporate attacks against democracy, human rights, and the environment.

Suzanne Gardinier is the author of a long poem called The New World (Pittsburgh 1993) and a book of essays on poetry and politics called A World That Will Hold All the People (Michigan 1996). The New World won the Associated Writing Program's Award Series in poetry in 1992. Suzanne has also received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation.  Her latest book is entitled Today: 101 Ghazals (Sheep Meadow, 2008).  She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Manhattan.

Bob Hicok’s most recent book of poems is This Clumsy Living (Pitt., 2007).  Insomnia Diary (Pitt.) appeared in 2004.  His third book, Animal Soul, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.  An associate professor at Virginia Tech, he received the 2005 Jerome J. Shestack Prize from American Poetry Review.  His poems have appeared in three volumes of Best American Poetry and twice in the Pushcart Prize Anthology.  He is an NEA Fellow and recipient of the Felix Pollak Poetry Prize.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. Ilya is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) which won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. Dancing In Odessa was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year 2004 by ForeWord Magazine.  He teaches in the Creative Writing program at San Diego State University and lives in San Diego with his beautiful wife, Katie Ferris. 

Alex Lemon is the author of Mosquito (Tin House Books) and Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Open City, BOMB, Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, Tin House, AGNI, Gulf Coast, Pleiades and Best American Poetry 2008. He is a frequent contributor to The Bloomsbury Review, and co-editor of LUNA. Among his awards are a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. A memoir of his is forthcoming from Scribner.

Matthew Rohrer is the author of five books, most recently RISE UP, published by Wave Books. He lives in Brooklyn, and teaches in the creative writing program at NYU.

Ron Padgett's recent books include How to Be Perfect (poems), You Never Know (poems), If I Were You (collaborative works), and two memoirs,Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers and Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard. Padgett is also the editor of The Handbook of Poetic Forms as well as the translator of Blaise Cendrars' Complete Poems and Guillaime Apollinaire's Poet Assassinated. He has collaborated with artists such as Jim Dine, Alex Katz, George Schneeman, and Joe Brainard. Padgett has received Fulbright, NEA, Guggenheim, and Civitella Ranieri grants and fellowships, and was named Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. Recently he was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Forthcoming is a translation (with Bill Zavatsky) of Valery Larbaud's Poems of A. O. Barnabooth. Ron Padgett lives in New York City. For more information, visit his Web site.

Carl Phillips is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems 1986-2006 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2007) and Riding Westward (2006). His collection The Rest of Love (2004) won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The Tether (2001) won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, From the Devotions (1998) was a finalist for the National Book Award and Cortége (1995) was finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.  In the Blood (1992) was the winner of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize.  His honors include the 2006 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Pushcart Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize, induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress. Phillips is Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches in the Creative Writing Program. He was elected an Academy Chancellor in 2006. His forthcoming book of poems, Speak Low, will be out in 2009 from FSG.

Victoria Redel is the author of two books of poetry and three books of fiction. Her latest novel The Border of Truth (Counterpoint 2007) weaves the situation of refugees and a daughter’s awakening to the history and secrets of her father’s survival and loss. Loverboy (2001, Graywolf /2002, Harcourt), was awarded the 2001 S. Mariella Gable Novel Award and the 2002 Forward Silver Literary Fiction Prize and was chosen in 2001 as a Los Angeles Times Best Book. Loverboy was adapted for a feature film directed by Kevin Bacon. Her most recent collection of poems, Swoon (2003, University of Chicago Press), was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals including O the Oprah magazine, Redbook, Bomb, More and NOON.  Redel teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Fine Arts Work Center.

Patrick Rosal is the author of Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive, winner of the Members' Choice Award from the Asian American Writers' Workshop , and most recently My American Kundiman, which won the 2006 Book Award for Poetry from the Association of Asian American Studies as well as the Global Filipino Literary Award. His chapbook Uncommon Denominators won the Palanquin Poetry Series Award from the University of South Carolina, Aiken. His work has been published widely in journals and anthologies including Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, North American Review, The Literary Review, Columbia, and the Beacon Best. His individual poems have been honored by the annual Allen Ginsberg Awards, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Arts and Letters Prize, Best of the Web among others. He has served on the faculty of Kundiman and is currently Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Texas, Austin.

Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Homegirls and Handgrenades (White Pine Press, 2007), Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems (1999); Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums: Love Poems (1998); Does your house have lions? (1995), which was nominated for both the NAACP Image and National Book Critics Circle Award; Wounded in the House of a Friend (1995); Under a Soprano Sky (1987); Homegirls & Handgrenades won an American Book Award.  Other titles include I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1978); A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1973); Love Poems (1973); Liberation Poem (1970); We a BaddDDD People (1970); and Homecoming (1969).  She has published several plays and books for children. Among the many honors she has received are the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University, where she began teaching in 1977, and held the Laura Carnell Chair in English there until her retirement in 1999. She lives in Philadephia.

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of Interior with Sudden Joy and Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press 2008), which won the 2007 James Laughlin Award. Her poems have been published in Bomb, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review and elsewhere. She is the Poetry Editor of Tin House Magazine and Tin House Books and has taught poetry at many institutions, including Eugene Lang College and Princeton University.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

Tracy K. Smith is the author of Duende (Graywolf 2007), which received the 2006 James Laughlin Prize of the Academy of American Poets.  Her first collection, The Body’s Question (Graywolf 2003), won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She has also received awards from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, Essence Magazine and elsewhere.  She has been a member of the Creative Writing faculty at Princeton since 2005.