Sandra ALCOSSER’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She received two fellowships from the NEA, one as its first Conservation Poet; she was Montana’s first poet laureate, and is the recipient of the Merriam Award for Distinguished Contribution to Montana Literature. Her poetry collections A Fish to Feed All Hunger and Except by Nature were honored by the National Poetry Series, the Academy of American Poets and the AWP. She founded and directs SDSU’s MFA each fall, and serves on the MFA faculty of Pacific University. 

Sandra LUCKOW is a writer, producer and an award-winning filmmaker who teaches film production at Yale, Columbia and Barnard. Her first documentary, Sharp Edges, won the Louis Sudler Prize in the Performing and Creative Arts, and has aired worldwide. Belly Talkers, a cross-country road trip exploring the art of ventriloquism, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. A member of the International Documentary Association and the Directors Guild of America, she founded Ojeda Films, a company devoted to independent and personal filmmaking; she was also an associate director on ABC’s One Life to Live. The documentary That Way Madness Lies… about her brother’s paranoid schizophrenia is in post-production.

Christopher Merrill has published seven collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; many edited volumes and translations; and six books of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War, and Self-Portrait with Dogwood. His writings have been translated into nearly forty languages; his journalism appears widely; his honors include a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, numerous translation awards, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial and Ingram Merrill Foundations. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa since 2000, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO from 2011-2018, and in April 2012 President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities. www.christophermerrillbooks.com

Lincoln PAINE is a historian, author, editor, and curator whose books include the award-winning The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (2013), Down East: A Maritime History of Maine (2000), and Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia (1997). He is an editor of Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction; as a professional editor, he specializes in academic writing by non-native speakers of English. He has lectured on a range of maritime topics, including literature of the sea and naval history, in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and is a trustee of the Maine Maritime Museum. His website is www.lincolnpaine.com.