Abayomi Animashaun’s poems have appeared in several print and online journals, including African American Review, Cortland Review, and Diode. He is the author of two poetry collections, Sailing for Ithaca and The Giving of Pears. A recipient of the Hudson Prize and a grant from the International Center for Writing and Translation, Animashaun teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Megan Fernandes is a South Asian American poet and academic. She received her PhD in English at the University of California, Santa Barbara and holds an MFA in poetry from Boston University. She is the poetry editor of the anthology Strangers in Paris (Tightrope Books) and is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Organ Speech (Corrupt Press) and Some Citrus Makes Me Blue (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has been published in the Boston Review, Guernica, Memorious, Rattle, Redivider, among others. Her first full length manuscript of poetry, The Kingdom and After, is forthcoming in Spring 2015. In fall 2015, she will be an Assistant Professor of English at Lafayette College.
 

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Rigoberto González is the author of 15 books, most recently the poetry collection Unpeopled Eden, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. The recipient of Guggenheim, NEA and USA Rol.n fellowships, a NYFA grant in poetry, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, The Poetry Center Book Award, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award, he is contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine, on the executive board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and professor of English at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey.

Philippine-born author Maria Victoria A. Grageda-Smith’s first career was in the practice of law. After marriage to an American that led her to immigrate to the United States, she rediscovered and pursued a childhood passion: creative writing. Her first book of poems, Warrior Heart, Pilgrim Soul: An Immigrant’s Journey, was published in November 2013 to critical acclaim. She writes a monthly poetry column for the Chicago-based immigrant newsmagazine, VIA Times. Her poetry has been published in, among others, Lyrical Iowa; Dicta (the University of Michigan Law School Literary Journal); and other arts and literary publications. She founded and ran a poetry program for The Iowa Homeless Youth Shelters in 2007–2009. A featured poet at the 2002 Austin International Poetry Festival, she continues to read and perform her poetry in a variety of poetry readings and festivals. Her fiction gained national U.S. recognition when her short story, Portrait of the Other Lady, won first place in a nation-wide short story contest in 2004. The short story and an interview of her were published in a Los Angeles-area newspaper. She attended the 2005 UCLA Asian-American Writer’s Program and was featured as an emerging Asian-American writer in several print media and online articles.In November 2013, the Filipino American Chicago Hall of Fame honored her with the Outstanding Writer Award. She has an upcoming short story collection, Pieces of Dreams and Other Stories, and is currently finishing her first novel, Gabriela’s Eyes.

Jee Leong Koh is the author of four books of poems. His work has been shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize and translated into Japanese. A new book of poems Steep Tea is forthcoming from Carcanet Press (UK) in July 2015. Originally from Singapore, Koh lives in New York City. He is the co-chair of the inaugural Singapore Literature Festival in New York, and the curator of the arts website Singapore Poetry.

Vasyl Makhno is a Ukrainian poet, essayist, and translator. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, including Winter Letters and Other Poems, translated by Orest Popovych (Spuyten Duyvil, 2011) and, most recently, I want to be Jazz and Rock’n’Roll (Ternopil, Krok, 2013). He has also published two books of essays, The Gertrude Stein Memorial Cultural and Recreation Park (2006) and Horn of Plenty (2011). Makhno has translated Zbigniew Herbert’s and Janusz Szuber’s poetry from Polish into Ukrainian. His poems and essays have been translated into 25 languages, and volumes of his selected poems were published in Poland, Romania, Serbia and the USA. He is the 2013 recipient of Serbia’s Povele Morave Prize in Poetry. Makhno currently lives in New York City.