Xue Di:  was born in Beijing.  He is the author of four volumes of collected works and one book of criticism on contemporary Chinese poetry in Chinese.  In English translation, he has published four full length books and four chapbooks.  His work has appeared in numerous American journals and anthologies and has been translated into several languages.  He is a two-time recipient of the Hellman/Hammett Award and a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Fellowship.

Andrei Codrescu:  was born in Sibiu, Romania, and emigrated to the United States in 1966.  He is the author of numerous books of poems, novels, and essays including Jealous Witness (2008), It Was Today (2003), and his debut, License to Carry a Gun (1970), which won the Big Table Poetry Award.  He founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Books and Ideas.  He was a regular commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered.  He taught literature and poetry at Johns Hopkins.  His poetry explores themes of identity, exile, and transformation with bold irreverence.

Bobby Byrd:  grew up in Memphis, Tennessee during the golden age of the city’s music scene.  “That music” he says, “probably saved my life.”  He and his wife, Lee, moved in 1978 to El Paso.  In 1985, they founded Cinco Puntos Press, an independent publishing company rooted in the US / Mexican Border.  He has published 10 books of poems and received an NEA Fellowship for Poetry; the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship; and, with his wife, a Lannan Fellowship for Cultural Freedom.

John Brandi:  has been faithful to poetry, painting, and journaling for the majority of his life.  He continues to seek source and renewal in his travels abroad and in the mountains of New Mexico, his home for fifty years.  A recipient of a National Endowment Poetry  Fellowship, he has lectured in India, Canada, Mexico, and Indonesia.  In 2017 he received a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for A House By Itself: Selected Haiku Masaoka Shiki.