Abdul Ali is the author of Trouble Sleeping that won the 2014 New Issues Poetry Prize and teaches in the English department at Towson University. His poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in Gargoyle, Gathering of Tribes, National Public Radio, New Contrast (South Africa), The Atlantic, and the anthology, Full Moon on K Street, among other publications. He has received grants, awards, and fellowships from The DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities, American University, College Language Association, and the Mt. Vernon Poetry Festival at George Washington University. He is a member of the board of directors of the Hurston/Wright Foundation. You can visit him online at abdulali.net.

Poet and journalist celeste doaks is the author of Cornrows and Cornfields, Wrecking Ball Press, UK (March 2015). In 2012 she received the Lucille Clifton Scholarship to attend Squaw Valley Writers Workshop.  Her work has garnered a variety of accolades including the 2009 Academy of American Poets Graduate Prize, the 2010 AWP WC&C Scholarship, and residencies at Atlantic Center of the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her journalism has appeared in the Huffington Post, Village Voice, Time Out New York, and Quarterly Black Book Review. Her poems have been published in multiple on-line and print publications such as Chicago Quarterly Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Bayou Magazine and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Celeste received her MFA from North Carolina State University; currently, she teaches creative writing at Morgan State University.