Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, writer, painter, and photographer. She received the MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and the MA in English Literature from the University of Delaware. A 2007 Pushcart Nominee, she is the recipient of fellowships from Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, Napa Valley Writers Conference, New York State Summer Writers Institute, Soul Mountain, and others. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Indiana Review, Comstock Review, Brilliant Corners, Mosaic, Puerto Del Sol, Torch, Lumina, PMS: poem memoir story, and many others. She lives in New York.

Samiya Bashir is the author of Gospel, a 2009 Lambda Literary Award finalist, and Where the Apple Falls, a Poetry Foundation bestseller and finalist for the 2005 Lambda Literary Award. She is also editor of Black Women's Erotica 2 and co-editor, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana, of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. Her poetry, stories, articles, essays and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications including: Ms. Magazine, Essence, Curve, ColorLines, Callaloo, Obsidian III, Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint, and more. Bashir has been honored with awards, fellowships, grants, and residencies from a variety of organizations, is an alumni fellow with Cave Canem and a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, a writer's festival for LGBT writers of African descent.

francine j. harris has work appearing in McSweeney's "Poets Picking Poets", Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, and in the anthology from the AIDS Project of Los Angeles: to be left with the body. She has participated in the Callaloo workshop and was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize. Originally from Detroit, she is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan.