Jee Leong Koh
Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by UK’s Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the US. He has published four other books of poems, a volume of essays, and a collection of zuihitsu. His work has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Malay, Vietnamese, Spanish, Russian, and Latvian. His latest book is a work of hybrid fiction, titled Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an insignificant Japanese poet (Gaudy Boy LLC). Originally from Singapore, he lives in New York City, where he heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound. Koh received his B.A.Hons from Oxford University in English and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.
Natasha Rao
Natasha Rao is a poet and educator from New Jersey. Her debut collection, Latitude, was chosen by Ada Limón as the winner of the 2021 APR/Honickman First Book Prize. The recipient of a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, she has also received fellowships from Bread Loaf, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, the Hambidge Center, and the Community of Writers. Her work appears in The Nation, American Poetry Review, The New York Times Magazine, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from NYU, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. She is currently Co-Editor of American Chordata. Rao resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Alexis Sears
Alexis Sears (she/her) is the author of Out of Order (Autumn House Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and the Poetry by the Sea Book Award: Best Book of 2022. Her work appears in The Best American Poetry, The Cortland Review, the Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, Rattle, and elsewhere.Sears grew up in Palos Verdes, California. She earned a BA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars in 2017 and an MFA in poetry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2019. She is an editor-at-large of the Northwest Review and a contributing editor of Literary Matters. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Paisley Rekdal
Paisley Rekdal is an esteemed poet and author whose work has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Art Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, amongst many others. She has just been awarded the prestigious 2024 Kingsley Tufts Prize for West: A Translation. Paisley’s poems and essays have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, amongst numerous other publications. Paisley is the author of 11 books of poetry and nonfiction, in which she expertly negotiates challenging issues of race, sexuality, myth, suffering, and identity. Her writing has been described as having “riveting poetic alchemy“. Paisley is a Distinguished Professor at The University of Utah, and served as Utah’s Poet Laureate from 2017-2022. Paisley’s extensive oeuvre of poems, nonfiction work and digital projects can be read here: paisleyrekdal.com/work-online/
Yrsa Daley-Ward
Yrsa is a celebrated author, actor and screenwriter of Jamaican and Nigerian heritage. She is known for her courageous original voice; she artfully fuses poetry with theatre, music and storytelling. Yrsa writes fearlessly about her journey, traversing topics of identity, race, mental health, and femininity. Yrsa has been quoted as saying “If you’re afraid to write it, that’s a good sign. I suppose you know you’re writing the truth when you’re terrified“. She is most known for her debut book, Bone, as well as for her live poetry performances. Her autobiographical novel, The Terrible, a coming-of-age tour de force, was awarded the prestigious PEN/Ackerley Prize in 2019. Yrsa’s work has been featured in many publications worldwide, including Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Dazed, and Notion.Yrsa’s many explorations and projects can be discovered on
Malia Chung
Malia started writing poetry in a middle school English class. While in high school, her poems received numerous awards and honorable mentions including ones from the Scholastic Art and Writing Competitions (multiple Gold and Silver Keys), the Helen Creeley Poetry Prize, the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Poetry Prize, the Smith College Poetry Prize and Apprentice Writer/Susquehanna University. She is a current junior at Princeton University, where she was recently awarded the 2023 Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize for her poem “Ghazal for Fall”. Malia’s writing pursuits extend beyond poetry, to non-fiction and journalism. She is a creative writing mentor to many younger students who are just starting on their voyage of verse.