Hieu Minh Nguyen is a queer Vietnamese American poet and performer based out of Minneapolis. His debut collection of poetry, This Way to the Sugar, was named a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the Minnesota Book Award, and he is a recipient of the 2017 NEA Fellowship for poetry.

Sam Sax is the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series, and Bury It, winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They are the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion and currently serve as a lecturer in the ITALIC program at Stanford University.

D. A. Powell is the author of five collections, including Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. A professor at the University of San Francisco, he is a recipient of the John Updike Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.