Claudia Rankine, National Book Critics Circle Award, Los Angeles Times Book Award, and NAACP Image Award winner for Citizen: An American Lyric; author of Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; professor of Creative Writing at Yale University, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets

Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, Paint it Black, and Revolution of Marina M.

Jane Wong, author of Overpour, published in Best American Poetry series, professor at Western Washington University

Allison Benis White, author of Self-Portrait with Crayon, Please Bury Me in This, Small Porcelain Head, professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside

Natashia Deon, author of Grace, practicing attorney, law professor, UCLA Creative Writing professor

William Lucas Walker is an Emmy Award-winning writer and producer whose television credits include Frasier, Will & Grace and Roseanne. He co-created the critically-acclaimed one-hour Showtime comedy series The Chris Isaak Show. He regularly blogs for The Huffington Post in his column Spilled Milk, the first recurring humor column by a gay parent to appear in a major U.S. publication.

Ruth McKee is a founding member of the Ovation-Award winning theatre company Chalk Rep, and serves as the Literary Manager for the Black Dahlia Theatre. She is a member of the Los Angeles Playwrights Union, and teaches playwriting and screenwriting at Cypress College and the California Summer School of the Arts.

Kazim Ali, poet, novelist, essayist: Orange Alert (University of Michigan Press 2010) The Far Mosque (Alice James Books 2005), The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions 2008), The Disappearance of Seth (Etruscan Press 2009), Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (Wesleyan 2009), Quinn’s Passage (BlazeVox Books 2005).  Co-founder: Nightboat Books.  Recipient of Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Poetry featured in Best American Poetry. Columnist for the American Poetry Review.  Contributing editor for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ Writer’s Chronicle. Professor at Oberlin College.

Zach Savich, poet: Full Catastrophe Living (University of Iowa Press 2009, winner of the 2008 Iowa Poetry Prize and recipient of a New American Poet honor from the Poetry Society of America), Annulments(University Press of Colorado 2010, winner of the 2010 Colorado Prize for Poetry). A chapbook, The Man Who Lost His Head, will be published by Omnidawn.  Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

David Shook, poet, translator, reviewer, editor: co-founder and managing editor of Molossus: an online broadside of world literature. Poetry, translations, and criticism have appeared in Oxford Magazine, Poetry, PN Review, World Literature Today, and many other publications.  A chapbook of his translations of Isthmus Zapotec poet Víctor Terán is available from the Poetry Translation Centre. Idyllwild Arts alum.

Chase Twichell, poet, publisher: Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), The Snow Watcher (Ontario Review Press, 1998), The Ghost of Eden (Ontario Review Press, 1995), Perdido (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1991), Northern Spy: Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981), Dog Language (Copper Canyon Press, 2005),The Odds (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986). Editor: The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach (edited with Robin Behn: HarperPernnial, 1992),founder of Ausable Press. Winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, among others.

Lehua Taitano, fiction writer, poet: appalachiapacific (Merriam-Frontier award-winning chapbook, University of Montana), A Bell Made of Stones (forthcoming from TinFish Press). Featured in: The Fiction at Work Bi-Annual Report, USO’s on Freeways: Anthology of Pacific Island Writers in/from the U.S., Micronesia Anthology: Indigenous Writers of Micronesia, and Transpacific Poetics.

Oliver Mayer, playwright: Author of over twenty plays, including his two newest plays, Fortune is a Woman and Members Only, the sequel to his groundbreaking play Blade to the Heat. Professor at USC.

Chard deNiord, poet: The Double Truth (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), Night Mowing (The University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), Sharp Golden Thorn (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003), Asleep in the Fire (University of Alabama Press, 1990).  Associate professor at Providence College.

Alba Cruz Hacker, poet, translator: No Honey For Wild Beasts (Plain View Press, 2008). Served as Managing and Poetry Editor for The Pacific Review and as a Faculty Advisor for The Coachella Review and Planet Mexicali Magazine.

Daniel Rabuzzi, novelist: The Choir Boats (ChiZine, 2009), The Indigo Pheasant (ChiZine 2012). Executive at Year Up in New York City.

Kate Durbin is an artist, writer, and filmmaker from Los Angeles, California. Her books include Hoarders (Wave Books), E! Entertainment (Wonder), The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books), and ABRA (1913 Press).

• American University
• Bard College
• Bennington College
• Case Western Reserve University
• Chapman University
• Emerson College
• Hendrix College
• Kenyon College
• Mills College
• New York University
• Reed College
• Sarah Lawrence College
• School of the Arts Institute, Chicago
• Sewanee: The University of the South
• St. John’s College
• UC Berkeley
• UC Irvine
• UC San Diego
• USC
• University of Iowa
• University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• University of Montana
• University of St. Andrews, Scotland