Haley Laningham is a poet from Fresno, California. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University. Her work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Eunoia Review.

Bruce Beasley is the author of nine collections of poems, including Prayershreds (Orison Books, 2023) and All Soul Parts Returned (2017) and Theophobia (2012), both from BOA Editions. He has won fellowships from the NEA and Artist Trust and four Pushcart prizes. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Oksana Maksymchuk’s debut English-language poetry collection Still City (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024) was long-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Pen/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, the Scaglione Prize for Literary Translation from the Modern Language Association, and other honors. Maksymchuk holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University.

Sylvie Kandé’s Gestuaire (Gallimard, 2016), winner of the Prix Louise Labé, is published as Gestuary (Seagull, 2026). La quête infinie de l’autre rive. Épopée en trois chants (Gallimard, 2011), winner of the Prix Lucienne Gracia-Vincent, is published as The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three Cantos (Wesleyan University Press, 2022). Lagon, lagunes (Gallimard, 2000) was postfaced by Édouard Glissant. Granted a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for research and creation, Kandé has permanent membership in the Léopold Sédar Senghor International Academy.

Rebecca Hawkes is a painter-poet from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her first book, Meat Lovers (Auckland University Press, 2022), won a Laurel Prize and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Hawkes earned a poetry MFA from the University of Michigan as a Fulbright scholar and edits Sweet Mammalian. Her illuminated-manuscript-chapbook HIDE is forthcoming from Ngā Pukapuka Pekapeka, and her next book, Fool’s Spring, will be published by Auckland University Press and YesYes Books in 2027.

W. J. Herbert’s debut collection, Dear Specimen, (Beacon Press, 2021) was selected for the National Poetry Series and awarded a 2022 Maine Literary Award for Poetry. Winner of the 2022 Rumi Prize for Poetry, Herbert has also published work in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Atlantic, Best American Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Maine.

Edward Sambrano III is a Latinx poet, critic, editor, and educator from San Antonio, Texas. They earned their MFA from the University of Florida and have received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Community of Writers, and New York State Summer Writers Institute. Poetry editor for The Dodge, they have writing published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Ploughshares, Pleiades, and other journals.

Brian Patrick Heston grew up in Philadelphia. His collection If You Find Yourself (2014) won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Prize. A recent chapbook, Sing, Dark Times, is available from Seven Kitchens Press. His poems have appeared in such publications as The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Witness, North American Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Ghost Fishing, an anthology published by University of Georgia Press. He teaches literature and creative writing at Truman State University.