Originally from small-town Southeast Texas, Natalie Giarratano received her MFA and PhD in creative writing from Western Michigan University. Her first collection of poems, Leaving Clean, won the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry and was published in June 2013 by Briery Creek Press. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast, American Literary Review, Isthmus Review, Laurel Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others. D.A. Powell selected her work for inclusion in the 2011 edition of Best New Poets, and she won the 2011 Ann Stanford Poetry Prize from Southern California Review. She teaches writing at American University and lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, Zach Green, and their pup, Miles.

Photo by: Toby M. Schaeffer

Beth Marzoni's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, Grist, Hayden's Ferry Review, New Ohio Review, and Puerto del Sol among others. Her collaborations with Monica Berlin have appeared in Better: Culture & Lit, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, and New Orleans Review among others. Their book, No Shape Bends the River So Long, was awarded the 2013 New Measure Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Free Verse Editions at Parlor Press in 2014. Marzoni is an Assistant Professor of English at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Photo by: Molly Jo Rose