Current Participants

Sumita Chakraborty earned a B.A. from Wellesley College and a doctorate in English with a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University. She currently serves as an assistant professor of English and creative writing at North Carolina State University.

Born in Akron, Ohio, A. Van Jordan is a graduate of Wittenberg University (B.A.), Howard University (M.A.), Warren Wilson College (M.F.A.), and Vermont College of Fine Arts (M.F.A.). He serves as a professor of English at Stanford University.

Shane McCrae grew up in Texas and California. He earned a B.A. from Linfield College, an M.A. from the University of Iowa, an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He serves as an associate professor in Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program and lives in New York City.

Lisa Russ Spaar serves as Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Spaar is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award, the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, and the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry. She was short-listed for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for Excellence in Reviewing. She was a 2016 finalist for Baylor’s Cherry Teaching Award and gave the “Virginia Beall Ball Lecture in Contemporary Poetry” at the 2018 Baylor Poetry Festival. She is the inaugural Beall Visiting Poet.