Charif Shanahan is the author of Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing (Southern Illinois University Press, 2017), winner of the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Prize. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and twice a semi-finalist for the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Apogee, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Literary Hub, The Manhattanville Review,The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.  His translations from Italian and German have appeared in A Public Space, Circumference, and RHINO Poetry, among other publications, and have been performed by the Vienna Art Orchestra.  A Cave Canem graduate fellow, he holds degrees from Princeton University, Dartmouth College, and New York University.  Formerly Programs Director of the Poetry Society of America, Charif is poetry editor of PsychologyTomorrow Magazine and a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Morocco.

Corrina Bain is a gender-liminal writer and performer based in Brooklyn, New York. He has a long history in poetry slam as a member and coach of multiple slam teams. He has shared stages with Jim Carroll, Patricia Smith, Dorothy Allison, and Saul Williams. He is the author of the full-length poetry collection Debridement (Great Weather for Media 2015,) and has also published work in journals and anthologies such as PANK, decomP, Muzzle Magazine, BOOTH, and the Everyman's Library book Villanelles. He has thrice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In life, he has worked in an abortion clinic, on a sexual assault crisis hotline, and as an international volunteer with HIV/AIDS in Mozambique. He is trained as a psychiatric social worker, and works extensively with movement, embodiment, trauma and sexuality. But he'd rather just dance with you.

Angel Nafis is a Cave Canem Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, The BreakBeat Poets Anthology, MUZZLE Magazine, The Rumpus and Poetry Magazine. She has represented the LouderArts Poetry Project at both the National Poetry Slam and the Women of the World Poetry Slam in 2011. She is an Urban Word NYC Mentor and the founder, curator, and host of the quarterly Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon. She is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics, 2012) With poet Morgan Parker she is The Other Black Girl Collective. Facilitating writing workshops and reading poems across the United States and Canada, she lives in Brooklyn.

sam sax is a 2015 NEA Fellow and finalist for The Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He’s a poetry Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers where he serves as the Editor-in-chief of Bat City Review. He’s the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion & author of the chapbooks, A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters (Button Poetry, 2014) + sad boy / detective (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) + All The Rage (SRP, 2016). His poems are forthcoming in Boston Review, FIELD, Ploughshares, PEN Poetry Series, Poetry Magazine, + other journals