NAOMI SHIHAB NYE has served as Young People's Poet Laureate of the United States and poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine and the Texas Observer. She has written or edited more than thirty books and has worked as a visiting writer all her life. She received Lifetime Achievement awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the National Books Critics Circle, and the Arab-American National Museum.

MARION WINIK is the author of The Big Book of the Dead, First Comes Love, and other books. Her essays have recently been published in Agni and The Hopkins Review. She reviews books for numerous publications and hosts The Weekly Reader podcast on NPR. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore and was a commentator on All Things Considered for 15 years.

"How can you not respect a poet whose favorite drink is 'HEB generic diet orange, ' who inscrutably lists Tommy Lee Jones along with 'scorpions in my panties' among her greatest fears, and who can declare--from hard experience--that 'No one wants to hear you scream, and so you learn not to.' Wow, what a voice Ann Alejandro had! Thank you, Naomi Shihab Nye and Marion Wink, for making sure we heard it."--Stephen Harrigan, author of The Leopard Is Loose--Stephen Harrigan