Joanne V. Gabbin is the executive director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and a professor of English at James Madison University. She is the author of the biography Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition and a children's book, I Bet She Called Me Sugar Plum, and the editor of two previous Furious Flower anthologies - The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry and Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present. She also edited Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy and Shaping Memories: Reflections of African American Women Writers.
Lauren K. Alleyne is the assistant director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and an associate professor of English at James Madison University. She is the author of the poetry collection Difficult Fruit. A Cave Canem graduate, Alleyne was the winner of the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Contest.
