Ekphrastic Poets: 

Dean Rader is a poet, art writer, scholar, and critic who has published widely in the fields of poetry, American Indigenous studies, modern and contemporary art, and visual culture. Rader is a professor in The Department of English and in the Honors College at the University of San Francisco, where he has won the University's Distinguished Research Award and the College of Arts & Sciences' Dean's Scholar Award, as well as a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Society of Collegiate Scholars. His next book, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, a collection of poems in which Rader's poems and Twombly's work appear side-by-side, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2023. 

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Sarah Rosenthal is the author of Lizard (Chax, 2016) and Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil, 2009) as well as several chapbooks including but not limited to: Estelle Meaning Star (above/ground, 2014), disperse (dusie, 2014) and The Animal (in collaboration with artist Amy Fung-yi Lee, dusie, 2011). She edited A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Poets of the Bay Area (Dalkey Archive, 2010). She received a BA magna cum laude in Literature and Society from Brown University and an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She is the recipient of the Leo Litwak Fiction Award, a Creative Capacity Innovation Grant, a San Francisco Education Fund Grant, and grant-supported writing residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Soul Mountain, Ragdale, and New York Mills. 

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Tongo Eisen-Martin is an American poet and activist. He is also the current San Francisco Poet Laureate. Eisen-Martin's 2017 book Heaven Is All Goodbyes published by City Lights won a PEN Oakland Award, the 2018 American Book Award, 2018 California Book Award, and 2018 National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year. His 2020 title Blood on the Fog published by City Lights was named a Best Poetry Book of 2021 by Elisa Gabbert of the New York Times.