Aichlee Bushnell + Solmaz Sharif

Aichlee Bushnell’s remarkable debut, Objects of Attention, won the 2014 Noemi Press Book Award for Poetry and works with the writings of Thomas Jefferson tell the story of Sally Hemings with great care, as Juliana Spahr writes: “Care with how to represent her, her body. Care to not appropriate. Care to complicate. Care to tell it as expansive, as international.” An alum of the MFA program at Mills College, Bushnell is a Cave Canem fellow. She currently lives in Oakland with her family.

One of the most anticipated books of 2016, Solmaz Sharif’s Look uses language from the Department of Defense to investigate the violence and loss of war, and how these things are embedded in daily language. Sharif’s poetry has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Boston Review, and others. The former managing director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, her work has been recognized with many awards including NEA and Stegner Fellowships. She is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.