Alen Hamza immigrated to the United States from Bosnia-Herzegovina as a refugee at the age of fifteen. He has received fellowships from the Michener Center for Writers, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the University of Utah. Hamza is the author of Twice There Was a Country (CSU Poetry Center, 2020) and his work has appeared in AGNI, Fence, and The Southern Review. He teaches at Western Michigan University.  

 Hajar Hussaini is a poet, essayist, and translator from Kabul living in Saratoga Springs, where she is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Skidmore College. Her debut poetry collection, Disbound (University of Iowa Press, 2022), grapples with the English language as it conforms to the pressures of abandonment. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her work has appeared in various journals including Poetry Magazine, Poetry Foundation, AAWW—Margins, and Pamenar Press. She is currently working on the English translation of the Afghan novel Death and Its Brother (2017) by Khosraw Mani.