A painter, poet, novelist, and anthology editor, Clarence Major has written over ten volumes of poetry and seven works of fiction and edited two anthologies. He has been awarded a 2016 PEN Oakland/Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award, a 2015 "Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts" by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Council on the Arts Fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Award finalist. Major is a distinguished professor emeritus of twentieth century American literature at the University of California, Davis. He retired in 2007. The Essential Clarence Major was published in 2020.

Yusef Komunyakaa won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Neon Vernacular. His other collections include Warhorses, Taboo, The Emperor of Water Clocks, and his most recent collection, Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth New and Selected Poems 2001-2021. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Komunyakaa is the recipient of the 2021 Griffin Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, 2011 Wallace Stevens Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the William Faulkner Prize, among other honors.