Dustin Parsons has an MA from Kansas State University and an MFA from Bowling Green State University. Awards for his writing include an Ohio Arts Grant and a New York Fine Arts grant in creative non-fiction, the 2013 American Literary Review Prize in fiction, the 2014 fiction prize from The Laurel Review and a “notable” in the 2014 Best American Essays. He was awarded a residency fellowship at Wyoming’s Brush Creek Foundation of the Arts. He is associate professor of English at State University of New York-Fredonia. He lives in western New York with his wife, the poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and their two wily toddlers.

Gary McDowell is the author of five collections of poetry, including, most recently, Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None (Burnside Review Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Press Book Award, and Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014). He’s also the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems and essays have appeared in journals such as American Poetry Review, The Nation, and Gulf Coast. He lives in Nashville, TN with his family where he’s an assistant professor of English at Belmont University.

Caitlin McGuire was born in San Diego and grew up in California, but calls Seattle home. She has completed residencies in Croatia, Serbia, and Brooklyn, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in River Teeth, Harpur Palate, Redivider, and Ninth Letter, among others.