Max Layton: born in 1946, left home when he was 16 and survived by working as everything from tobacco picker and logger to bookstore owner, bank vice president, and high school English teacher. Along the way he earned an M.A. in English Literature at the University of Toronto and authored three books of poetry. His fourth and forthcoming book is entitled LOVE (Guernica Editions). For more information about Max, go to www.maxlayton.com.

Agneta Falk Hirschman: was born in 1946 in Stockholm, Sweden. She is a poet, visual artist, editor, and translator. In her twenties she moved to England, and in 1998 she moved to San Francisco. Her first book of poetry, Here by Choice, was published by Trigram Press, London in 1980. For the book, she received a writer’s bursary from Yorkshire Arts. From 1992–1999, she was the co–director of Word Hoard, promoting writing in the community and organizing poetry events. For seven years, she ran a women’s writing group and worked with people in recovery and the mentally handicapped.

Lyn Hejinian: poet, essayist, translator, and publisher she is a founding figure of the Language Poetry movement of the 1970s and an influential force in the world of experimental and avant– garde poetics. She is the author of many poetry collections, including My Life and My Life in the Nineties (Wesleyan University Press, 2013), The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn, 2012), and The Fatalist (Omnidawn, 2003). A native Californian, she teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jack Foley: has published fifteen books of poetry, five books of criticism, and Visions & Affiliations: A California Literary Timeline (Pantograph Press, 2011), a “chronoencyclopedia” of California poetry from 1940 to 2005. His most recent books include WHEN SLEEP COMES: Shillelagh Songs (Sagging Meniscus press, 2020), RIVERRUN (Poetry Hotel Press, 2017), and others. He became well known through his “multivoiced” performances with his late wife, Adelle, who was also a poet. His radio show, “Cover to Cover,” airs every Wednesday on KPFA in California. In 2010, He received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Berkeley Poetry Festival. Michael McClure: “Jack Foley is our firebrand experimentalist and he holds his torch high so the reader can have more light.”