Katie Condon is a Poetry Editor at Grist. If you would like to see first hand how her poetry has been influenced by Dorothea Lasky, head to www.katiecondonpoetry.com. To get your own copy of Black Life, visit wwww.wavepoetry.com

Nancy Zigler is a recent MFA graduate from the University of Pittsburgh. She is currently an Education Specialist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and a past fiction editor of Callaloo and Hot Metal Bridge magazine. She enjoys writing doomed love stories and about her love-hate relationship with Texas. Nancy likes teaching, painting, Pluto, and trekking across desolate cities in search of good pizza. She blogs here.

Alex Bledsoe grew up in west Tennessee an hour north of Graceland (the home of Elvis) and twenty minutes from Nutbush (the birthplace of Tina Turner). He’s been a reporter, editor, photographer and door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. He now lives in a Wisconsin town famous for trolls, writes before six in the morning and tries to teach his three kids to act like they’ve been to town before. Bledsoe is also the author of the Eddie LaCrosse novels and the Memphis Vampires series.

Stephanie Anderson is a writer living in Boca Raton, Florida. She holds an MFA from Florida Atlantic University, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, The Chronicle Review, Sweet, Devil’s Lake, Farm and Ranch Living, and others. Her essay “Greyhound” was the 2015 winner of the Payton James Freeman Essay Prize sponsored by The Rumpus, Drake University, and the Freeman family. Stephanie is proud to have grown up in South Dakota, and she recently completed a book on sustainable agriculture.