Hayan Charara is a poet, children’s book author, essayist, and editor. His third collection of poetry, Something Sinister (2016), was awarded the 2017 Arab American Book Award; he is also the author of The Sadness of Others (2006) and The Alchemist’s Diary (2001). His children’s book, The Three Lucys (2016), received the New Voices Award Honor, and he edited Inclined to Speak (2008), an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. With Fady Joudah, he is a series editor of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He currently teaches in the Honors College at the University of Houston.

Abraham Smith is the author of four poetry collections: Ashagalomancy (Action Books, 2015); Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer (Action Books, 2014); Hank (Action Books, 2010); and Whim Man Mammon (Action Books, 2007). In 2015, he released Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press), a co-edited anthology of contemporary rural American poetry and related essays. His creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Destruction of Man, his book-length poem about farming, is forthcoming in 2018 from Third Man Books. Presently, he is at work upon a poetry manuscript about cranes—birds whose song and stature electrify him. This fall, Smith joins the Weber State University community as an assistant professor of English.