Carmen Giménez is the executive director and publisher of Graywolf Press. She is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Be Recorder, a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN Open Book Award, the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She has been awarded an Academy of American Poets Fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and she served as the publisher of Noemi Press for twenty years. 

Caelan Ernest Nardone (they/them) is a nonbinary poet and performer living in Brooklyn. They are the author of Tonight I Am the Moment (forthcoming from The Northeast Coast Press, January 2027), and night mode (currently out of print). Most recently, their work has been published in The Northeast Coast Journal, VOLT!, Blush Literature, them., WUSSY, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. They hold an MFA in Writing from Pratt Institute. They are a publicist at Graywolf Press.

Danez Smith is the author of four poetry collections: [insert] boy, Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and, most recently, Bluff. They are also the curator of Blues in Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, NAACP Image Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. They have also received an array of grants, fellowships, and residencies, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Princeton Arts Fellowship. Danez lives in the Twin Cities with their people and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including the novels Earth 7, Barn 8, and Vacation; the memoir Revolution, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; two story collections, including Wait Till You See Me Dance; and the graphic novel I, Parrot. Her fiction and essays have appeared in over fifty magazines and journals, including Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Capital grant for Innovative Literature, and fellowships from the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ucross residencies.

She’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center for Writers, the New Writers Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative writing program for students incarcerated at a south Texas penitentiary. Originally from Chicago, she lives in Austin with the philosophy professor Matt Evans.

Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of nine books, including I Hotel, a finalist for the National Book Award, and, most recently, Questions 27 & 28. The recipient of a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, a John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, and a United States Artists Fellowship, Yamashita was also elected to be a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is a professor emerita of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.