Ross Gay is the author of Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006). His poems have been published in numerous magazines and journals, in addition to being widely anthologized. Ross is an editor for the chapbook press Q Avenue, and has happily shepherded many beautiful poets’ work into print. His Artists’ Books, in collaboration with Kimberly Thomas, are The Halo, BRN2HNT, and The Bullet.

Lauren Shufran is a PhD candidate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she is studying Renaissance sonnet sequences and discourses of religious enthusiasm during the English Civil War. She received her MFA from San Francisco State University in 2008. Inter Arma, her first book, is forthcoming from Fence.