Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016). His debut collection was honored as a finalist for the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, 2017 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and 2017 Norma Faber First Book Award. A chapbook, Black Sand, is forthcoming in early 2022 from Foundlings Press.

Richard Hamilton was born in 1975 and grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey and Columbus, Georgia. A self-identified Black, queer poet, his first collection, Rest of Us, examines the ways race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect to expand our notion of personhood and peopled responses to racism, human exploitation, and violence. A Cave Canem alumnus, his poetry has appeared in CONSEQUENCE magazine, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, Steel Toe Review, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, The Drunken Boat, and Cave Canem Anthologies edited by poets Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte. Richard is the recipient of fellowships from The Chautauqua Writers' Festival and The Vermont Studio Center. In 2020, he received the Oscar Williams and Gene Derwood Award. He holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama and MA in Arts and Public Policy from New York University. Richard lives in Washington, D.C.

Carly Inghram is a poet from Atlanta. She received an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. Her work is featured in The Indianapolis Review and Prelude. Her first collection, Sometimes the Blue Trees, was released from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in 2019. She currently lives in Harlem and teaches Kindergarten in the Bronx.