Best known for How I Became Hettie Jones, her memoir of the Beat Scene, Hettie Jones has published 26 books for children and adults, the first in 1971 and the most recent in 2016. Drive, her first poetry collection, won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber Award and was followed by All Told and Doing 70. Jones has also written memoirs for others, including Rita Marley (No Woman No Cry). She has taught poetry, fiction, and memoir in colleges and community settings, and from 1988 until 2002 ran a weekly writing workshop at New York State’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. Jones is the former Chair of PEN’s Prison Writing Committee, and currently teaches Activist Literature in the Graduate Writing Program at The New School, a memoir workshop at the 92nd Street Y, and a women’s writing group at the Lower Eastside Girls Club. She is currently finishing Full Tilt, new and selected poems, and Fiction at the Intersection, a story collection. Jones has lived in the East Village since before it was given that name, and has never wanted to move.
Carley Moore is an essayist, novelist, and poet. Dancing Girl Press published her debut poetry chapbook, Portal Poem, in 2017. Her debut essay collection, 16 Pills, is forthcoming from Tinderbox Editions in 2018.