Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has published four volumes of poetry, including The Darker Fall, Want, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize, and Chord, winner of the UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. His fourth book, The Galleons, was just published by Milkweed Editions. Rick's work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.  He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Stanford University. He lives in Tacoma, Washington and directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University. He is also the poetry editor for New England Review. 

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Victoria Chang’s poetry books include Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, Circle, and the newly-published OBIT, from Copper Canyon Press. Her children’s picture book, Is Mommy?, was illustrated by Marla Frazee and published by Beach Lane Books/S&S. It was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her middle grade novel, Love, Love was published by Sterling Publishing. Victoria has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles and is the Program Chair of Antioch’s Low-Residency MFA Program. She also serves on the National Book Critics Circle Board.