Charles Alexander is the founder and director of Chax Press, in Tucson, where he has lived all but three of the past 27 years. His books include Hopeful Buildings (Chax 1990), Arc of Light / Dark Matter (Segue 1992), Near or Random Acts (Singing Horse 2004), and Certain Slants (Junction 2007), and the recently published Pushing Water (Cuneiform 2011). He is recipient of the distinguished Arizona Arts Award, and is a former director of Minnesota Center for Book Arts, of Black Mesa Press, and of the Tucson Poetry Festival. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Arizona, and frequently teaches in the Summer Writing Program of Naropa University. Book arts works by Alexander are included in collections at the Getty Museum Library, the State University of New York at Buffalo Poetry Collection, the New York Public Library, the University of Wisconsin Special Collections Library, the University of Arizona Special Collections Library, the Stanford University Library, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, and at other major collections nationally and internationally. In the summer of 2007 he was a participant in the TAMAAS poetry translation seminar in Paris, France. He is currently at work on a book about the pleasures of poetry.

Sawako Nakayasu writes and translates poetry, and her recent book, Mouth: Eats Color –Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals does both in one work. Other recent books include Texture Notes and Hurry Home Honey, and books of translation include Ayane Kawata’s Time of Sky/Castles in the Air and Takashi Hiraide’s For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut, which received the Best Translated Book Award in 2009.