Ron's book "Avery Colt Is A Snake, A Thief, A Liar," out now on Southeast Missouri State University Press, won the Nilzen Literary Prize For A First Novel.
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His new book of poems from Norton is called Floaters. Other books of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006) and Alabanza (2003). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Paul Guest is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Because Everything Is Terrible, and a memoir, One More Theory About Happiness. His writing has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, Slate, New England Review, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and numerous other publications. A Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting Award winner, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press http://ibbetsonpress.com. He has curated the Newton Free Library Poetry Series for over 20 years. The Doug Holder Papers Collection is now housed at the University at Buffalo. Many of Holder's taped interviews of poets and writer can be found at Harvard University, and the Cid Corman Collection at U/Mass Boston. Holder was cited by the Massachusetts House of representatives for his work as a professor, editor, publisher, and editor. For 20 years Holder has been the arts/editor of The Somerville Times. Holder's poetry and prose have appeared in Rattle, Worcester Review, Lips, The Cafe Review, The Boston Globe, and many other journals. He teaches creative writing at Endicott College in Beverly, MA and college writing at Bunker Hill Community College. Alan Kaufman ( editor of the Outlaw Bible of American Literature) said of Holder's work, "Like WC Williams, or Charles Resnikoff, Doug Holder opens himself nakedly to Life and gives us its poetry, unadorned and remarkable."