Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays. Of his sixteen collections of poetry, his most recent titles include Wheels, Back of Mount Peace, and Hope's Hospice. His two novels are Bivouac and She's Gone. Dawes is the editor of four anthologies: A Bloom of Stones: A Tri-Lingual Anthology of Haitian Poems After the Earthquake, Hold Me to an Island: Caribbean Place: An Anthology of Writing, Home is Where: An Anthology of African American Poetry from the Carolinas, and Red: Contemporary Black Poetry. His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley. Dawes also won an Emmy for his Pulitzer Center project, HOPE: Living and loving with AIDS in Jamaica. Kwame Dawes is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and Chancellor's Professor of English at University of Nebraska.

Toi Derricotte has published five collections of poetry, most recently, The Undertaker's Daughter (2011). An earlier collection of poems, Tender, won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks, published by W.W. Norton in 1997, won the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Derricotte's essay, "Beginning Dialogues," is included in The Best American Essays 2006, edited by Lauren Slater; her essay, "Beds," is included in The Best American Essays 2011, edited by Edwidge Danticat. Recognized as a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania in 2009, her honors include the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America; two Pushcart Prizes; the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists; the Alumni/Alumnae Award from New York University; the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, Inc.; the Elizabeth Kray Award for service to the field of poetry from Poets House; and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Maryland State Arts Council. With Cornelius Eady, she co-founded Cave Canem Foundation. She is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and serves on the Academy of American Poets' Board of Chancellors.

Nikky Finney was born in South Carolina, within listening distance of the sea. A child of activists, she came of age during the civil rights and Black Arts Movements. At Talladega College, nurtured by Hale Woodruff’s Amistad murals, Finney began to understand the powerful synergy between art and history. Finney has authored four books of poetry: Head Off & Split (2011); The World Is Round(2003); Rice (1995); and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Kentucky, Finney also authored Heartwood(1997), edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Finney’s fourth book of poetry, Head Off & Split was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for poetry.

Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is a recipient of an Academy of American Poets’ Larry Levis Prize and the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry for his first collection, Far District: Poems (Peepal Tree Press Limited, 2010). He is currently a Pirogue fellow and an assistant professor of English at Cornell University.

Keith D. Leonard is the author of Fettered Genius: The African American Bardic Poet from Slavery to Civil Rights. His publications, presentations, and courses have revolved around the study of political consciousness in African American poetry and poetics, with an emphasis on the relationship between literary form and political meaning.  In addition to essays on the work Yusef Komunyakaa, Audre Lorde, African American women’s poetry and jazz in African American literature, Prof. Leonard has served as guest editor for special issues of the journals Callalooand MELUS.  Prof. Leonard is currently working on a book project that explores how contemporary African American artists, especially poets, represent the role of love, intimacy and willed affiliation in imagining notions of community.

Howard Rambsy II is an associate professor of literature and director of the Black Studies Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He earned his B.A. in English and history at Tougaloo College in Mississippi in 1999, and completed his Ph.D. in literature atPennsylvania State University in 2004.   He has covered a range of subjects in his research, including Richard Wright, African American poetry, Gayl Jones, Colson Whitehead, and the comic strip and cartoon The Boondocks. His writings have appeared in African American Review, The Southern Quarterly, Black Issues Book Review, The Crisis magazine, andMississippi Quarterly. His book The Black Arts Enterprise (The University of Michigan Press) focuses on a defining African American literary and cultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s that involved figures such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni. Over the last several years, he curated several visual and audio exhibits featuring African American poetry and photographs from the extensive Eugene B. Redmond Collection. The exhibits have appeared in East St. Louis, Illinois, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, New York City, New York, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Ibadan, Nigeria.

Evie Shockley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.  She is the author of Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (Iowa, 2011).  She has also published two books of poetry: the new black (Wesleyan, 2011)—one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2011—and a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006).  Her poetry and essays have appeared in such journals and anthologies as African American Review, Contemporary Literature, Callaloo, esque, The Nation, CURA, Harvard Review, Tri-Quarterly Online, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, and Contemporary African American Literature: Our Living Canon.  Shockley’s honors include the 2012 Holmes Poetry Prize (awarded to a national poet by Princeton University’s creative writing faculty), an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship (2008), and a Schomburg Scholars-in-Residence Fellowship from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (2007).