Maureen N. McLane is a poet, memoirist, critic, and educator. She has published several books of poetry, including Same Life, Finalist for the Audre Lorde/Publishing Triangle Award; This Blue, Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry; Some Say, Finalist for the Audre Lorde/Publishing Triangle Award and for The Believer Award in Poetry; and More Anon: Selected Poems. Her book My Poets, was a New York Times Notable Book and Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. She is Professor of English at New York University.
Evie Shockley is the author of several collections of poetry, including semiautomatic and the new black, and forthcoming this March, suddenly we. She has won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, and fellowships from Cave Canem, MacDowell, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. She is an Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University New Brunswick.