Monique Ferrell is a poet and fiction writer. She is the author of three books of poetry: Attraversiamo, (2016), Unsteady (2011), and Black Body Parts (2002). Her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, North American Review, Antioch Review, Cimarron Review, and New York Quarterly Review, among other creative writing journals, as well as the anthologies Poetry, Token Entry, Out of the Rough, The Place Where We Dwell, and Rabbit Ears. Ferrell is also the author of a myriad of scholarly publications on writing, race, gender equality, and pop culture issues, including the forthcoming book The Seduction Deduction: Erotica, Intellect, and Godlike Transformation in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. These days, she is working on her first novel, Tuck, which focuses on the myth of “Black maleness” and responses to mental illness and depression in African American families.

James Shea is the author of two poetry collections, The Lost Novel and Star in the Eye, both from Fence Books. His poems have appeared in various anthologies such as The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets. A former Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong, he has taught at Nebraska Wesleyan University, the University of Chicago’s Committee on Creative Writing, Columbia College Chicago’s MFA Program in Poetry, DePaul University, and as a poet-in- residence in the Chicago public schools, where he received The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.