John Wieners (1934-2002) was a founding member of the "New American" poetry that flourished in America after the Second World War. Upon graduating from Boston College in 1954, Wieners enrolled in the final class of Black Mountain College. Following Black Mountain's closure in 1956, he founded the small magazine Measure (1957-1962) and embarked on a peripatetic life, participating in poetry communities in Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Buffalo throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, before settling in Boston in 1972. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, three one-act plays, and numerous broadsides, pamphlets, uncollected poems, and journals. Robert Creeley described Wieners as "the greatest poet of emotion" of their time.

Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of six books, including The Inside of an Apple, Take It, Shake and two collaborations with Matthew Rohrer: Nice Hat. Thanks. and Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He is an editor at Wave Books and has translated numerous works of poetry and prose, including Poker by Tomaz Salamun, which was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Award, and Five Meters of Poems by Carlos Oquendo de Amat. He is also the recipient of numerous other awards, including a NYFA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Seattle and New York.

CAConrad is the author of ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon, and The Book of Frank, as well as several other books of poetry and essays. A 2014 Lannan Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2011 Pew Fellow, he also conducts workshops on (Soma)tic poetry and Ecopoetics.

Robert Dewhurst, a poet and scholar, holds a doctorate from the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo. He has edited numerous small-press publications, most recently serving as the poetry editor of Semiotext(e)'s Animal Shelter. He lives in LA, where he is preparing a forthcoming biography and edition of collected poems of John Wieners.