Kwame Dawes: Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962 and moved with his family to Jamaica at the age of ten. He is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, two novels, four anthologies, numerous essays, and has seen fifteen of his plays produced. In 2009 he was awarded an Emmy for his interactive website, LiveHopeLove.com. Since 2011 he has taught at the University of Nebraska as a Chancellor's Professor of English as well as the Editor of Prairie Schooner. He is a Cave Canem faculty member and teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Matthew Shenoda: Matthew Shenoda has coedited four previous anthologies including From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea Books, 2009) and Enough: Poets Against the War (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003). Associate Dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at Columbia College Chicago, Shenoda's collection of poetry Somewhere Else (Coffeehouse Press, 2005) was named a 2005 debut book of the year by Poets and Writers and his second collection Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone was published in 2009 by BOA editions. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.