Natalya Sukhonos was born in Odessa, Ukraine and immigrated to New York City at the age of 9. She is bilingual in Russian and English and also speaks Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Natalya has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and teaches in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University. Her poems are published by Middle Gray Magazine, the Really System, the Emerge Literary Journal, cahoodalodaling, the Yellow Medicine Review, Empty Sink Publishing, and Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure. Natalya was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015 and the Best New Poets Anthology of 2015. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Ian and her daughter Naomi. Her chapbook Parachute was published in May of 2016 by Aldrich Press of Kelsay Books.

Annie Bien is a writer and a English translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts. She received her first writing grant with a seed commission from the Soho Theatre Company in London. She has published poetry and prose in literary journals, been Pushcart nominee, third place in the Biscuit Poetry competition, and a finalist in the Strokestown Poetry Competition. Her poetry collection, Plateau Migration was published by Alabaster Leaves Press, 2012. Her translation work is supported by 84000, a division of the Khyentse Foundation. She also teaches Pilates, and lives in Brooklyn.

Anton Yakovlev was born in Moscow, Russia and moved to the United States when he was 15. He studied filmmaking and poetry at Harvard University. He is the author of poetry chapbooks Ordinary Impalers (Aldrich Press, 2017), The Ghost of Grant Wood (Finishing Line Press, 2015), and Neptune Court (The Operating System, 2015). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Hopkins Review, Prelude, Measure, Amarillo Bay, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and elsewhere. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he was a finalist for the 2016 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award and the winner of the 2016 KGB Poetry Annual Open-Mic Contest. His book of translations of poetry by Sergei Esenin is forthcoming from Sensitive Skin Books in 2017. He is a co-host of the Carmine Street Metrics monthly reading series and, starting in January 2017, Education Director at the Bowery Poetry Club. He has also written and directed several short films.

Bill Christophersen was born in the Bronx and educated at Columbia. He is the author of The Apparition in the Glass: Charles Brockden Brown’s American Gothic (U. of Georgia Press) as well as a poetry collection, Two Men Fighting in a Landscape (Aldrich Press). A second collection, The Dicer’s Cup, will be published in spring 2017. His poems have appeared in such journals as Antioch Review, Hanging Loose, Poetry, Rattle, Southwest Review and Yale Review. His book reviews and critical essays have appeared in Newsweek, The New Leader, The New York Times Book Review, The American Book Review, Poetry and Shenandoah. His poems have won prizes from Rhino, the Kansas Quarterly and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in the Best New Poets anthology. He lives in New York and plays traditional and bluegrass fiddle.

Brendan Walsh’s poems have appeared and are forthcoming in Off the Coast, Connecticut Review, Mason’s Road, Anak Sastra, Lines+Stars, Cobalt Review, Winsconsin Review, and LONTAR. His first poetry collection, Make Anything Whole, was published by Five Oaks Press in 2015, and his second collection, Go, was published by Aldrich Press in March 2016. He has lived in and fallen in love with South Korea & Laos; he currently lives and teaches in South Florida to sate his palm tree needs. Brendan has been a featured reader at The New American Writing Festival, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival’s Connecticut Young Poets Day, and the Poetry Institute New Haven. When he is not training for amateur Strongman competitions or writing and reading poems, he is probably seeking the unknowable essence of humanity. He can be found online at http://brendanwalshpoetry.com/.