Eileen Myles is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. Novelist Dennis Cooper has described Myles as "one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature." The Boston Globe described them as "that rare creature, a rock star of poetry." In 2012, Myles received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete Afterglow, which gives both a real and fantastic account of a dog's life. Myles uses they/them pronouns.
Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.
Ann Arbor Huron High School, or Huron High School (HHS), is a public high school located in Ann Arbor, MI, in the U.S. The school is part of the Ann Arbor Public Schools district. Located at 2727 Fuller Road in eastern Ann Arbor near the banks of the Huron River, it serves grades 9 through 12. Huron is one of the three main public high schools in Ann Arbor. Newsweek named the school one of America's Best High Schools in 2012, and it was awarded Best Overall Academic Performance in Michigan by BusinessWeek in 2009 and 2010.
Annie Finch is an American poet, critic, editor, translator, playwright, and performer and the editor of the first major anthology of literature about abortion. Her poetry is known for its often incantatory use of rhythm, meter, and poetic form and for its themes of feminism, witchcraft, goddesses, and earth-based spirituality. Her books include The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells, Spells: New and Selected Poems, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self, A Poet's Craft, Calendars, and Among the Goddesses.
Camille T. Dungy is an American poet and professor.
Samiya A. Bashir is a queer American artist, poet, and author. Much of Bashir's poetry explores the intersections of culture, change, and identity through the lens of race, gender, the body and sexuality. She is currently the June Jordan visiting professor at Columbia University of New York. Bashir is the first black woman recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature. She was also the third black woman to serve as tenured professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Idra Novey is an American novelist, poet, and translator. She translates from Portuguese, Spanish, and Persian and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Cave Canem Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs and writing workshops across the United States. It is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Chris Hosea is an American poet, artist, and writer.
Kay Ulanday Barrett is a published poet, performer, educator, food writer, cultural strategist, and transgender, gender non-conforming, and disability advocate based in New York and New Jersey, whose work has been showcased nationally and internationally. Their second book, More Than Organs received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature Finalist. They are a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship recipient, three-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, and two-time Best of the Net Nominee. Barrett's writing and performance centers on the experience of queer, transgender, people of color, mixed race people, Asian, and Filipino/a/x community. The focus of their artistic work navigates multiple systems of oppression in the context of the U.S.
Jamila Woods is a Chicago-based American singer, songwriter and poet. Woods is a graduate of St. Ignatius College Prep and Brown University, where she received a BA in Africana Studies and Theater & Performance Studies. Her work focuses on themes of Black ancestry, Black feminism, and Black identity, with recurring emphases on self-love and the City of Chicago.
Airea D. Matthews is an American poet. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and the co-director of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College. She was named the 2022–23 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia.
Morgan Parker is an American poet, novelist, and editor. She is the author of poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also author of the young adult novel, Who Put This Song On. She has been described as a "multidisciplinary phenom" for her diverse body of work.
Maureen Therese Seaton was an American lesbian poet, memoirist, and professor of creative writing. She authored fifteen solo books of poetry, co-authored an additional thirteen, and wrote one memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, which won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Seaton's writing has been described as "unusual, compressed, and surrealistic," and was frequently created in collaboration with fellow poets such as Denise Duhamel, Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, David Trinidad, Kristine Snodgrass, cin salach, Niki Nolin, and Mia Leonin.
Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows is a 2014 book of poetry by the Korean American poet Eugenia Leigh. It was well received, reviewers commenting on its themes of abuse and redemption.
Olivia Gatwood is a poet, writer, and educator on topics that include coming of age, feminism, gendered violence, & true crime.
Sharon Dolin is an American poet, translator, and essayist, who is noted for her work in ekphrasis—writing in dialogue with art.
Alison Stine is an American poet and author whose first novel Road Out of Winter won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Her poetry and nonfiction has been published in a number of newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Paris Review, and Tin House.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is an American poet, novelist, photographer and visual artist, who is the author of five published collections of poems. In Seeing the Body (2020), she "pairs poetry with photography, exploring memory, Black womanhood, the American landscape, and rebirth." It was a nominee for the 2021 NAACP Image Award in Poetry.
Anaïs Duplan is a queer and trans Haitian writer now based in the U.S., with three book publications from Action Books, Black Ocean Press, and Brooklyn Arts Press, along with a chapbook from Monster House Press. His work has been honored by a Whiting Award and a Marian Goodman fellowship from Independent Curators International. He is a Professor of postcolonial literature at Bennington College, of which he is also an alum.
