Darrell Epp lives in Ward 3 in Hamilton, Ontario near the shore of Lake Ontario. His fourth poetry collection, Mechanical Monkeys, will be published by Mosaic Press next year. Follow him on twitter at @DarrellEpp

Marsha de la O is the author of three books. Her most recent book, Every Ravening Thing, came out from Pitt Poetry Series in 2019, published through the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her previous book, Antidote for Night, won the 2015 Isabella Gardner Award and was published by BOA Editions. Her first book, Black Hope, was awarded the New Issues Press Poetry Prize and was published by New Issues Press, Western Michigan University. Black Hope won an Editors’ Choice, Small Press Book Award. Other awards include the Morton Marcus Poetry Award and the da Poetry Award, as well as the Ventura Poetry Festival Poetry Award. De La O has received 3 Individual Artist Grants from the City of Ventura, Cultural Affairs Division, and a Tumbleweeds Residency from the California Arts Council.

Clif Mason is a professor of English and Humanities at Bellevue University, in Bellevue, NE. He is the author of one full-length collection, Knocking the Stars Senseless (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), and three chapbooks: The Book of Night & Waking (winner of the Cathexis Northwest Press Chapbook Prize), Self-Portraits in Which I Do Not Appear (Finishing Line Press), and From the Dead Before (Lone Willow Press). His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won prizes from the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest (chosen by Marge Piercy), Writers’ Journal, Plainsongs, the Midwest Writers’ Conference, and the Academy of American Poets. He has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Rwanda, Africa.

Terry Blackhawk’s life as a poet began in her mid-forties when she was teaching high school English and Creative Writing (1987-1994) for Detroit Public Schools. She received the Foley Poetry Prize in 1990, and her first book, body & field (Michigan State University Press, 1999), was a finalist in a number of first book awards, including the Larry Levis and Brittingham Prizes. She also received awards for teaching from Scholastic, Inc., United Black Artists, and Michigan Youth Arts Festival, which twice named her Michigan Creative Writing Teacher of the year. In 1995 she founded InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a 501©3 that extended her experiences as a classroom teacher of poetry to Detroit teens and continues to serve thousands of young Detroit writers every year. Find out more about Terry and read her poems in our Featured Poet section.