Dr. Tara Betts is the author of Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue. In addition to her work as a teaching artist and mentor for young poets, she has taught at Rutgers University and University of Illinois-Chicago, and at Stateville Prison via the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. She is the Inaugural Poet for the People Practitioner Fellow at University of Chicago. Betts currently serves as Poetry Editor at The Langston Hughes Review. She is also founder of the nonprofit organization The Whirlwind Learning Center on Chicago's South Side.

Michele Morano holds a PhD in English and an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa. She is the author of two books, the travel memoir Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain and the memoir-in-essays Like Love. Her short work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Best American Essays, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and WaveForm: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women. She has received honors and awards from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Illinois Arts Council, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. Dr. Morano is a founding editor of the English Department's Big Shoulders Books.