JOANNE V. GABBIN is the executive director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and a professor of English at James Madison University. She is the author of the critical biography Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition and a children's book, I Bet She Called Me Sugar Plum, and the editor of two previous Furious Flower anthologies, The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry and Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present. She also edited Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy and Shaping Memories: Reflections of African American Women Writers.

LAUREN K. ALLEYNE is the author of two collections of poetry, Difficult Fruit and Honeyfish. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, The Atlantic, Ms. Muse, Women's Studies Quarterly, Interviewing the Caribbean, and the Crab Orchard Review. Recent honors for her work include the 2018 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press, a 2017 Philip Freund Alumni Prize in Creative Writing (Cornell University), the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Prize, and a Picador Guest Professorship for Literature (University of Leipzig, 2015). She is the assistant director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and an associate professor of English at James Madison University.