David St. John has won many significant prizes, including both the Rome Fellowship and the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the O.B. Hardison Prize for teaching and poetic achievement from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the George Drury Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from Beyond Baroque.
He is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Study for the World’s Body (1994), which was nominated for the National Book Award, and more recently the The Auroras (2012), The Window (2014), and The Last Troubadour: Selected and New Poems (2017). St. John is also the author of a volume of essays, interviews and reviews entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us (1995) and is coeditor of American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (2009). He teaches at University of Southern California.
Jane Mead is the author of five collections of poetry: The Lord and the General Din of the World (1996), The House of Poured-Out Waters (2001), The Usable Field (2008), Money Money Money Water Water Water (2014), and World of Mad and Unmade (2016). Mead is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Lannan, Whiting, and Guggenheim foundations. She has taught at Colby College, Washington University, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was for many years poet-in-residence at Wake Forest University. Mead is currently on the faculty of the Drew University Low-Residency MFA program.