Ashley M. Jones received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including CNN, the Academy of American Poets, Tupelo Quarterly, Poets Respond to Race Anthology among others. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, was published by Hub City Press in January 2017, and it won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. She won the 2018 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press, and she is the 2019 winner of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Alison Palmer is originally from Charleston and the author of the poetry chapbook, The Need for Hiding (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Alison’s work appears in numerous journals including FIELD, Bear Review, Cimarron, River Styx, Columbia Poetry Review, Glass, Cream City Review, The Cortland Review, Cincinnati Review and The Los Angeles Review. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and a finalist for Eyewear Publishing’s 2018 Sexton Prize, Alison lives and writes outside Washington, DC.