Laura Apol is Associate Professor of Education at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. Her co-edited collection for young readers, Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems by William Stafford, was the winner of a Hungry Mind Book of Distinction Award. Apol's first book was Falling Into Grace (Dordt College Press, 1998) and her last book, Crossing the Ladder of Sun (Michigan State University Press, 2004), won a 2004 Oklahoma Book Award.

Gordon Henry's novel, The Light People, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1994 and won the American Book Award in 1995. His poetry and fiction have been published in The Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, Stories Migrating Home, and North Dakota Quarterly, as well as in numerous other journals and anthologies. He is an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa Tribe in Minnesota. While his father served in the United States Navy, Henry grew up traveling and living on military bases and on the White Earth Reservation. He has been actively involved in traditional Native American ceremonies for most of his adult life. After studying at Michigan State University and earning his Ph.D. in Literature at the University of North Dakota, Henry has taught at Ferris State University, Alma College, University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright Lecturer in Spain. He currently teaches at Michigan State University.

Jack Driscoll is the author of four books of poems, a collection of short stories, and three novels. He is also the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, the Pushcart Editors' Book Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the AWP Short Fiction Award, and seven Pen Syndicated Project Short Fiction Awards. His latest novel, How Like an Angel (University of Michigan Press, 2005), is the story of a Michigan family's knotted emotional lives. He is currently Writer-in-Residence at Interlochen Center for the Arts in northern Michigan.

Conrad Hilberry (b. 1928) grew up in Michigan. He earned his B.A. at Oberlin College and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin and taught at Kalamazoo College until his recent retirement. Hilberry has published several collections of poetry; he was poetry editor of Passages North and edited the anthology Poems from the Third Coast. His most recent books of poetry are Player Piano (Louisiana State University Press, 1999), Taking Notes on Nature's Wild Inventions (Snowy Egret, 1999), Sorting the Smoke: New and Selected Poems (University of Iowa Press, 1990, winner of the Iowa Prize), and The Hourglass Heart (New Issues, 2003).