Paul Martinez Pompa, guest author, studied at the University of Chicago and at Indiana University, where he received his M.F.A. in creative writing and served as a poetry editor for the Indiana Review. His chapbook, Pepper Spray, was published by Momotombo Press in 2006. His poetry has also appeared in After Hours: a journal of Chicago writing and art, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and Rhino. Some of his poems will be anthologized in two forthcoming books, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry and Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience. He currently teaches composition and creative writing at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois.

John Keene, guest author, (M.F.A. New York University) is the author of the award-winning novel Annotations (New Directions, 1995), and of the poetry collection Seismosis (1913 Press, 2006), with artwork by Christopher Stackhouse. He has published his fiction, poetry, essays and translations in a wide array of journals, including African-American Review, AGNI, Encyclopedia, Gay and Lesbian Review, Hambone, Indiana Review, Kenyon Review, New American Writing, and Ploughshares. Recipient of fellowships from the Artists Foundation of Massachusetts, the New York Times Foundation, Yaddo, and the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, his recent honors include a 2003 Fellowship in Poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a 2005 Whiting Foundation Award in Fiction and Poetry. A longtime member of the Dark Room Writers Collective of Cambridge and Boston and a Graduate Fellow of Cave Canem, he was Northwestern's inaugural Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professor in 2001. He teaches courses in fiction and cross-genre writing, African-American and Diasporic literature, aesthetics, and literary translation. In 2006, he received the Northwestern University Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences' E. Leroy Hall Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Tony Trigilio, moderator, has published poems in The Iowa Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Hotel Amerika, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Big Bridge, Admit Two, and many other journals. He is co-editor (with Arielle Greenberg and David Trinidad) of the poetry magazine Court Green. He teaches at Columbia College Chicago, where he directs the undergraduate poetry program. His recent books include the poetry collection The Lama’s English Lessons (Three Candles), the chapbook With the Memory, Which is Enormous (Main Street Rag), and the anthology Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870-1930 (co-edited with Tim Prchal; Rutgers University Press).