Carmen Bugan
Poet and RC alum Carmen Bugan was born in Romania and emigrated to the United States in 1989. She earned a BA from the University of Michigan, an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University, and a MA and PhD, both in English Literature, from Oxford University. Bugan’s work reckons with the legacy of totalitarianism, including the crippling effects of the culture of surveillance that existed under Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. She is the author of the poetry collections Crossing the Carpathians (2004), The House of Straw (2015), and Releasing the Porcelain Birds (2016). Her memoir, Burying the Typewriter (2015), was translated into several languages and earned high praise for its evocation of communist-era Romania; the book was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and a Waterstones Book Club Choice.

David Cope
David Cope is author of seven books, including The Invisible Keys: New and Selected Poems. He has received a Pushcart Prize (1977), an award in literature from the American Academy/Institute of Arts and Letters (1988), and was Grand Rapids Poet Laureate (2011-2014). He is editor of three anthologies: Nada Poems (1988), Sunflowers & Locomotives: Songs for Allen (1998), and Song of the Owashtanong: Grand Rapids Poetry in the 21st Century (2013). The David Cope Papers (1972-2013) are curated at the University of Michigan Special Collections Library.

Ken Mikolowski
Ken Mikolowski is the author of six books of poetry, THAT THAT most recently. His poems have been recorded by the Frank Carlberg Group and performed as Remember Me with Michael Gould. Along with his late wife, Ann, he was publisher, editor and printer of The Alternative Press. He taught poetry writing at the Residential College for 38 years before retiring in 2015.