Dana Gioia's essay, "Can Poetry Matter?", was published in The Atlantic which ignited a national debate on the role of poetry in contemporary intellectual life. He is also the author of Daily Horoscope, The Gods of Winter, Interrogations at Noon and the libretto for Nosferatu. Gioia's critical collection, Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture (Graywolf, 1992), was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the "Best Books of 1992". This volume also became a finalist for the 1992 National Book Critics Award in Criticism. Gioia’s third collection of poems, Interrogations at Noon (2001), won the American Book Award. He is director of the NEA. He is a contributing editor to Rattapallax.

Michael Hulse is a poet and translated W.G. Sebald, as well as Rilke, Goethe and contemporary German-language writers. Founder of the poetry press Leviathan and Leviathan Quarterly, Hulse’s most recent book of poems is Empires and Holy Lands: Poems 1976-2000, published this year. He is a contributing editor to Rattapallax.

James Ragan is the author of five books of poetry including In The Talking Hours, Womb-Weary, The World Sholdering "I", The Hunger Wall and Lusions, from Grove Press, as well as co-editor of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's Collected Poems. Director of the Graduate Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, he is a former NEA grant recipient and Fulbright Professor of Poetry. He has read his poetry for four heads of state including Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel and is featured in Rhino Records, In Thier Own Voices. He is a contributing editor to Rattapallax.