A prolific author and editor in myriad genres, Kwame Dawes has written sixteen collections of poetry, most recently Back of Mount Peace and Wheels. Dawes won an Emmy Award for his poetry and reporting on HIV/AIDS in his native Jamaica, and he is also the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Forward Poetry Prize, and the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Dawes is the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and a Chancellor's Professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA.
South Carolina Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth's poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize four times. Her collections of poetry include Noticing Eden, Despite Gravity, What the Water Gives Me, and The Endless Repetition of an Ordinary Miracle. Wentworth is also the author of an award-winning children's book, Shackles, and of Taking a Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights, with Juan E. Méndez.