Elizabeth Spires (born in 1952 in Lancaster, Ohio) is the author of seven poetry collections: Globe, Swan’s Island, Annonciade, Worldling, Now the Green Blade Rises, The Wave-Maker, and, newly published, A Memory of the Future. She has also written six books for children, including The Mouse of Amherst and I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and other magazines and anthologies. She lives in Baltimore and is a professor at Goucher College where she co-directs the Kratz Center for Creative Writing.

David Yezzi’s most recent books of poems are Birds of the Air and Black Sea, both from Carnegie Mellon. His verse play, Schnauzer, is forthcoming later this year from Exot Books. He is chair of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and editor of The Hopkins Review.​