Bill Berkson was born and grew up in New York and has lived in Northern California since the early 1970s. He is Professor Emeritus at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught art history and literature from 1984 to 2008. He is a corresponding editor for Art in America and a contributor to such other journals as Aperture and The Brooklyn Rail. His most recent books include: Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems; BILL, a words-and-images collaboration with Colter Jacobsen; Lady Air; Snippets; Not an Exit, with drawings by Léonie Guyer; and Repeat After Me, with watercolors by John Zurier; a new collection of his art writings, For the Ordinary Artist; and Parties du corps, a selection of his poetry in French translation. He is working on a set of memoirs entitled Since When. A new book of poems, Expect Delays, has just arrived from Coffee House Press.

Aisha Sasha John is a dance improviser and poet. She was born in Montreal, but spent most of her childhood in Vancouver, and currently lives in Toronto. John has a BA in African Studies and Semiotics from the University of Toronto and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her first book, The Shining Material, was published by BookThug in 2011. Her latest book is THOU (BookThug 2014). You can follow John at http://aishasashajohn.tumblr.com