JOSHUA WARE was born in Cleveland, OH in 1977. He is the author of Homage to Homage to Homage to Creeley (Furniture Press Books, 2011) and a half dozen chapbooks. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, such as American Letters & Commentary, Conduit, Fence, Gulf Coast, and New American Writing.
ROD SMITH is the author of several books of poetry, including Deed (U. Iowa Press, 2007), and Touché (Wave Books, forthcoming 2015). He edits the journal Aerial, publishes Edge Books, and manages Bridge Street Books in Washington, DC. He has taught at the The Iowa Writers' Workshop, The Maryland Institute College of Art, and The Corcoran College of Art + Design. Smith edited the Selected Letters of Robert Creeley (U. Cal Press, 2014) with Kaplan Harris and Peter Baker.
SIWAR MASANNAT, an Arab writer from Jordan, is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her first poetry collection, 50 Water Dreams, won Cleveland State University’s First Book Award and is forthcoming in 2015.
C DYLAN BASSETT is a teaching fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of The Invention of Monsters / Plays for the Theater (Plays Inverse, 2015), and six additional chapbooks. His recent poems are published or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, BOAAT, DIAGRAM, Gulf Coast, Sonora Review, and elsewhere.
SUSAN TICHY’s most recent books are Gallowglass (2010) & Bone Pagoda (2007), both from Ahsahta Press. Trafficke, from which this excerpt comes, will be out in March 2015. She teaches in the BFA & MFA programs at George Mason University, & when not teaching lives in a ghost town in southern Colorado.
ERIC PANKEY is the author of eleven books of poetry, most recently CROW-WORK from Milkweed Editions, and teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at George Mason University.