Tina Chang is the author of Hybrida, Half-Lit Houses, Of Gods & Strangers, and co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. Chang is the first woman to be named poet laureate of Brooklyn, New York.

Camille Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry including Trophic Cascade. She has written the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy is the editor of the anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and several other anthologies, including From the Fishouse and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade. 

Beth Ann Fennelly has crafted three books of poetry: Open House, Tender Hooks, and Unmentionables and three books of prose: Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother, a collection of essays; and Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, as well as a novel The Tilted World, co-authored with her husband Tom Franklin. Recently named Outstanding Teacher of the Year at the University of Mississippi, Fennelly is the state’s poet laureate.