India Lena González is a poet, editor, and artist. She graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University (BA) and received her MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing program. While at NYU she served as a writing instructor for undergraduates and received a Writers in the Public Schools fellowship enabling her to teach literature to middle school students via Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her work is published in American Chordata, The Brooklyn Review, Lampblack, PANK, Pigeon Pages, and Poets & Writers Magazine, among others. A three-time National Poetry Series finalist, India is also a professionally trained dancer, choreographer, and actor. fox woman get out! is her debut poetry collection. She lives in Harlem.
Aracelis Girmay is the author of three collections of poetry: the black maria (BOA Editions, 2016); Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), winner of the 2011 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and the GLCA New Writers Award, and a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007). The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Civitella Ranieri, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Girmay is the winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry. She teaches in Hampshire College’s School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Drew University’s low-residency MFA program in poetry.