Lucas de Lima is the author of the acclaimed Wet Land (Action Books) and, most recently, the chapbook Terraputa (Birds of Lace).  His work has appeared or is forthcoming in PEN Poetry, Poetry Foundation, The Volta, and the anthologies Latino/a Poetics and Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoetry Thinks Climate Change.  He has been a featured guest at Naropa University and the University of Nevada.  As a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, he works on race, coloniality, and ontology in Brazilian literature and culture within a hemispheric context.

Christopher Soto (aka Loma) is a queer latinx punk poet & prison abolitionist. They were named one of “Ten Up and Coming Latinx Poets You Need to Know” by Remezcla. They were named one of “Seven Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Artists Doing the Work” by The Offing. Poets & Writers will be honoring Christopher Soto with the “Barnes & Nobles Writer for Writers Award” in 2016. They founded Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color with the Lambda Literary Foundation. They cofounded The Undocupoets Campaign in 2015. Their poetry has been called political surrealist and focuses on domestic violence, queer youth homelessness, and mass incarceration. Their first chapbook “Sad Girl Poems” was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2016. They received an MFA in poetry from NYU, where they studied with Eileen Myles, Yusef Komunyakaa, Marie Howe, Brenda Shaughnessy, Major Jackson, Rachel Zucker. Their work has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese. Originally from the Los Angeles area; they now live in Brooklyn.

Peter Nickowitz is a graduate of Brandeis University and New York University, where he received a Ph.D in English and American literature. He is the author of Cinema Vernacular, a collection of poems, (Publication Studio, 2014) and Rhetoric and Sexuality: The Poetry of Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Merrill (Palgrave, 2006). His poems have appeared in journals including: The Paris Review, Third Coast, Barrow Street, Marsh Hawk Review, Slope, and Shampoo. Peter’s plays include The Alice Complex (Dixon Place, The Blank Theatre, Cherry Lane), Backgammon at the Louvre (The Blank Theatre), Songs & Statues (Stella Adler Studio/Harold Clurman Lab Theatre as Harold Clurman Playwright-in-Residence), and Love, Alters, Everything (The Lark). He lives in New York City and teaches at New York University.

Amanda Dissinger works with all sorts of music in Brooklyn. She recently released her first book of poetry 'This is How I Will Tell You I Love You' via St. Louis' Bottlecap Press. She has also been published on Potluck Mag, Rain Party Disaster Society, The Legendary, Be About it Press, Abrams Books/Poetry Bomb and more.