Al Young
Al Young's honors include Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN-USA Award for Non-Fiction, two American Book Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, and two New York Times Notable Book of the year citations, among others.

Young’s many books include novels, collections of poetry, essays, memoirs and anthologies. His work has appeared numerous journals and periodicals. He served as Poet Laureate of California from 2005 to 2008.

Francisco X. Alarcón
Francisco X. Alarcón, award winning Chicano poet and educator, is author of twelve volumes of poetry. His latest books are Ce•Uno•One: Poems for the New Sun (Swan Scythe Press 2010) and for children, Animal Poems of the Iguazú (Children’s Book Press 2008). He teaches at the University of California, Davis.

Judy Halebsky
Judy Halebsky's book, Sky=Empty, won New Issues Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. She trained in Japanese literature and Butoh dance in Tokyo on a MEXT fellowship. Originally from Nova Scotia, she now lives in San Francisco and teaches at Dominican University of California.

Christina Hutchins
Christina Hutchins’ poems appear in Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern
Review. In 2010-11, she won The Missouri Review Prize, National Poetry Review’s Finch Prize, the Becker Chapbook Prize (Radiantly We Inhabit the Air), and Sixteen Rivers published The Stranger Dissolves. She is the Poet Laureate of Albany.

Shawn Pittard
Shawn Pittard is the author of Standing in the River, winner of Tebot Bach’s 2010 Clockwise Chapbook Contest. He also has written These Rivers, a chapbook collection from Rattlesnake Press. He’s written two screenplays, Blood Atonement and Junk Sick, and is studying the art of the pitch. He lives in Sacramento.

Dave Seter
Dave Seter studied creative writing at Princeton University, where he earned his degree in civil engineering. Born in Chicago, he has lived on both coasts, and currently resides in Sonoma County. His chapbook entitled Night Duty was published in 2010 by Main Street Rag Publishing Company.

Lee Slonimsky
Lee Slonimsky’s four books of poems include Pythagoras in Love and the forthcoming Logician of the Wind. His work has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Measure, The New York Times and Poetry Daily. He is the co-author, along with Carol Goodman, of the Lee Carroll trilogy, including the recently released The Watchtower. He has a dual life as a hedge-fund manager and poet.

Catherine Strisik
Catherine Strisik, author of Thousand-Cricket Song (Plain View Press 2010), writes poems of witness reflective of her travels in Cambodia. Some publications include The Café Review, Northwest Review, Canteen, Studio, War, and Literature and the Arts. She has been awarded poetry honors from Peregrine, Comstock Review, and the Southwest Literacy Center, as well as a residency at Vermont Studio Center and a grant from the Puffin Foundation. Cathy’s been featured on National Public Radio / Word Temple Series. Strisik is writing her second collection of poetry, Paradise's Itch.

Jeanne Wagner
Jeanne Wagner is the winner of several national awards, including the 2011 Inkwell Poetry Competition, judged by Mark Doty. She is the author of five poetry collections. The most recent, In the Body of Our Lives, was released by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2011. Her work has appeared widely in journals.