"Metta Sáma, Cave Canem Fellow, is the author of South of Here (New Issues Press, 2005) which was a finalist in the Yale Younger Series Award, the Paris Review Prize, the Stan and Tom Wick First Book Prize, and a finalist for the Kenyon Review Book Prize."

"M.L. Liebler is the author of several books of poetry. He has received numerous awards including The 2005 Paterson Poetry Award of Excellence and The Barnes & Noble/Poets & Writers 2010 Writers for Writers Award."

Jimmy Cvetic is the author of Secret Society of Dog (Awesome Books, 2010). He has run the summer Hemingways reading series in Pittsburgh for over twenty years.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs's Paper Pavilion (White Pine Press 2007) is her debut poetry collection. Previously, her poems have appeared widely in anthologies, film, and journals and on radio.

Denise Duhamel is the author of many books, most recently Ka-Ching! (U. of Pittsburgh, 2009)and Two and Two (2005). She won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and has been anthologized widely, including four volumes of The Best American Poetry.

Gwyn Cready received the 2009 RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance and is the author of Tumbling Through Time, Seducing Mr. Darcy, and Flirting with Forever.

Tina May Hall won the 2010 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her stories have appeared in the minnesota review, Quarterly West and other journals. Her novella in prose poems, All the Day's Sad Stories, was published by Caketrain Press in 2009.

Jacqueline Berger is the author of The Gift That Arrives Broken, winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize; Things That Burn, which won the Agha Shahid Ali Prize; and The Mythologies of Danger, winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.

Cynthia Hogue has published seven collections of poetry, most recently Or Consequence (2010), and When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina (2010). Among her honors are a Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Christiane Leach is the recipient of a PCA Fellowship, a Pittsburgh Magazine "40 under 40" award, and is among the 2010 August Wilson Center fellows. Her plays Saffronia and The Only Good Artist is a Dead Artist have been performed in Pittsburgh.