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Janet McNally earned a BA in English and communication studies from Canisius College and an MFA in fiction from the University of Notre Dame.
McNally is the author of Some Girls (White Pine Press, 2015), winner of the 2014 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. She has been awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships in fiction.
McNally is an associate profesor of creative writing at Canisius College and lives in Buffalo, New York.
Ada Limón is the author of The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) and Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
The first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman is the author of The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough (Penmanship Books, 2015).
Tracy K. Smith is the author of Such Color: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2021), Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011), winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Duende (Graywolf Press, 2007), which received the 2006 James Laughlin Award. Smith served as the poet laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019.
The author of several books of poetry, Toi Derricotte is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national poetry organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017.
John Gallaher is the author of Brand New Spacesuit, forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2020, Map of the Folded World (University of Akron Press, 2009) and The Little Book of Guesses (Four Way Books, 2007), which won the Levis Poetry Prize.