A.M. Juster has published two books of original poetry and four books of translated poetry.  His most recent books are Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles,Sleaze & Slander,and The Billy Collins Experience;forthcoming will be The Elegies of Maximianus. He has won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award three times, the Richard Wilbur Award, the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, and has received other recognition, including two honorary degrees.  Juster is the pen name of Mike Astrue who served in senior roles in four White House administrations, including as Commissioner of Social Security, General Counsel of Health and Human Services, and Associate Counsel to the President.  He is a board member of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

Gene Grabiner has a chapbook,There Must Be More Than Trigonometry,from Foothills Publishing (2017).  His poems have appeared in various journals, including, Blue Collar Review,Comstock Review,Connecticut River Review,Jewish Currents,Passager,and Slant.  He lives in Buffalo, New York, but travels for readings.

Mark DeFoe is a professor emeritus at West Virginia Wesleyan, where he teaches in the low-residency MFA Writing Program.  His tenth chapbook,In the Tourist Cave,was published by Finishing Line Press in 2012.  DeFoe won the 2005 Chautauqua Literary Journal’s national poetry competition and the 2009 Tennessee Chapbook Award.

Robert Breen was born in Boston and graduated from the University of Massachusetts.  After a decades-long career as a Boston firefighter, he retired, and began writing.  He is the author of a collection of poems, The Shore Digger (firepoet.com) and a memoir, The Poet and the Apprentice,a manuscript that is currently under review.  He is scheduled to speak about his memoir and poetry at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy, Ireland, in September.  He lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Karen.