A native of Radford, Virginia, LISA KWONG is author of the chapbook Becoming AppalAsian, forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. Her poems have appeared in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Best New Poets 2014, Still: The Journal, Pluck!, and other publications. Her poem “Searching for Wonton Soup” is the winner of Sundress Publications’ 2019 Poetry Broadside Contest. She currently teaches Asian American Studies at Indiana University and English at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, Indiana.

CIARA MILLER, a native of Chicago, holds both an MFA and an MA in poetry and African American/African diaspora studies from Indiana University. She has published poems and academic essays in such collections and periodicals as The Whiskey of Our Discontent, The BreakBeat Poets, Mosaic, Fjords Review, African American Review, Callaloo, Muzzle, Alice Walker: Critical Insights, Chorus, and many more. She currently lives in Chicago where she serves as an Afro-American Studies professor at Kennedy King College and the CEO of Miller’s Learning Center (MLC), a test prep and career-support company.

AKIKO PAVOLKA is a New York-based musician, composer, and educator whose strikingly original music blends pop and jazz with the music and sensibilities of her native Japan. Akiko was born in Tokyo and grew up in Yokohama. By her teen years she was performing as a singer, bassist and drummer with rock and roll bands. Her interests turned to jazz and after several years of moonlighting as a vocalist in Tokyo while working as a banker by day, she decided to move to the United States to further her studies at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music. She graduated in 1994 with a degree in Performance and was also awarded the Cleo Laine Outstanding Vocalist Award. She moved to New York City in 1995 and formed her band House Of Illusion shortly thereafter. She has been performing her music regularly in New York ever since and in addition she has toured extensively in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Argentina, and her native Japan. She has released six recordings of her own music, the most recent of which is Late Parade.