Poet, book publisher, and founding editor of Tender Buttons Press, Lee Ann Brown is the author of Other Archer (Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2015), In the Laurels, Caught (Fence Books, 2013), Crowns of Charlotte (Carolina Wren Press, 2013), The Sleep That Changed Everything (Wesleyan, 2003), and Polyverse (Sun & Moon Press, 1999), which won the 1996 New American Poetry Competition, selected by Charles Bernstein. In 1989, Brown founded Tender Buttons Press, which is dedicated to publishing experimental women’s poetry. She has taught at Brown University, Naropa University, Bard College, and elsewhere, and held fellowships with the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and others. From 2017–18, she was the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at Cambridge University.

Poet Sophia Dahlin is the author of the poetry collection Natch (City Lights, 2020). She earned her BA from Bard College and her MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her work has appeared in many journals, including BOMB, Fence, Lambda Literary, Denver Quarterly, and The Recluse. With Jacob Kahn, she edits the chapbook press Eyelet. Dahlin lives in Oakland, California, where she teaches with California Poets in the Schools, conducts generative writing workshops, and hosts occasional readings.

Poet Harryette Mullen was born in Florence, Alabama. She was educated at the University of Texas and the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Her honors include fellowships from the American Academy of Poets and the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women’s Studies, as well as a Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry and a PEN Beyond Margins Award. She taught at Cornell University, and currently holds a position in the English Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Poet Brett Evans lives in New Orleans— once near the bayou, now Lake-adjacent. He hearts pho, ferries, and half-feral beagles. He is the founder of the t-Rex parade and author (w Chris Shipman) of Keats Is Not The Problem.

Poet Sonnet L’Abbé is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Sonnet’s Shakespeare, which was a Quill and Quire book of the year. Katy Didden wrote: “L’Abbé’s poems calls me to do no less than overhaul my fundamental ideas about poetry, poem-making, the role of the poet in society, and even what it means to read.” They teach creative writing at Vancouver Island University, and write verse for song and page, on Snuneymuxw traditional territory.