Valerie Hsiung, Billy Merrell, Kamilah Aisha Moon
Valerie Hsiung is the author of efg (exchange following and gene flow): a trilogy (Action Books, forthcoming 2016), incantation inarticulate (O Balthazar Press, 2013), and under your face (O Balthazar Press, 2013). Her writing appears or is forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Cosmonauts Avenue, Denver Quarterly, New Delta Review, PEN Poetry Series, Prelude, RealPoetik, and VOLT, among others. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hsiung spent significant portions of her childhood in Las Vegas, received a BA from Brown University, and is now based out of Brooklyn, New York, where she works as a love detective and matchmaker. She is also an editor for Poor Claudia.
Billy Merrell published his first book of poems, Talking in the Dark, with Scholastic in 2003, at the age of 21. Since then, he has received his MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, co-edited (with David Levithan) the Lambda Literary Award-winning nonfiction anthology The Full Spectrum, and served as web developer for Poets.org, providing web analysis and content strategy for the Academy of American Poets website. He is a contributor to the New York Times-bestselling children’s series Spirit Animals. Merrell’s newest book, Vanilla, a novel in poems, is forthcoming from Scholastic in Fall of 2017.
Kamilah Aisha Moon’s work has been featured widely, including Harvard Review, Oxford American, and Prairie Schooner. Her poetry collection, She Has a Name (Four Way Books, 2013), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award from the Publishing Triangle. A Pushcart Prize winner and a 2015 New American Poet presented by the Poetry Society of America, Moon has taught English and Creative Writing for many organizations and institutions, most recently as a Visiting Professor at Rutgers-Newark. Her next poetry collection is forthcoming in 2017 from Four Way Books.