Shane Seely is a Pennsylvania-born poet educated in Pennsylvania, Kansas, and at Syracuse University, in New York, before coming to St. Louis in 2002. For several years he helped lead the Freshman Composition Program at Washington University, then became as Associate Professor of English in the Creative Writing division at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He has edited UMSL’s literary journal, Natural Bridge, and is the author of two books, The Snowbound House, and The Surface of the Lit World, as well as the chapbook, History Here Requires Balboa. The Surface of the Lit World is the 2014 winner of the Hollis Summers Prize in Poetry from the Ohio University Press.

Nebraska-born, and educated in Florida, as well as at Washington University, where his dissertation was on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chuck Sweetman wrote a chapbook, Incorporated, that won a contest, at Dream Horse Press; but rather than publish the chapbook, Dream Horse brought out in 2008 a full-length collection, Enterprise, Inc. A poet, a dramatist, a short story writer, as well as a one-time accountant, Chuck was for several years the Director of Writing Courses at Washington University. His family moved to Kansas City, where he is a contributing editor to december magazine, and he has learned to live with himself in rooting for the Royals.