A.L. Nielsen’s latest book, A Brand New Beggar, is just out from Steerage Press. His work has appeared in Best American Poems and other anthologies, and he has won two Gertrude Stein Awards for his poetry. His critical works have won the Josephine Miles Award, the SAMLA Studies Prize, the Kayden Award for best book in the humanities, and a Gustavus Myers Citation. Nielsen is currently the George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature at the Pennsylvania State University.

Evie Shockley’s most recent book of poetry, the new black (Wesleyan), won the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry. Recipient of the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize, Shockley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.