David Lloyd born in Dublin, is a writer and critic currently living in California and teaching at the University of California, Riverside. Arc & Sill: Poems 1979-2009, (Shearsman Books and New Writers Press, 2012) collects his five previous books of poetry: Taropatch (Oakland: Jimmy’s House of Knowledge, 1985),Coupures (Dublin: hardPressed Poetry, 1987), Change of State (Berkeley: Cusp Books, 1993), Sill, (Los Angeles: Cusp Books, 2006), and Vega (Los Angeles: Mind Made Books, 2009). His play, The Press, has had staged readings in Dublin, Los Angeles, Liverpool, and Manila, and premiered at Liverpool Hope University in 2010. As a critic, he works on Irish literature and culture and on poetry and aesthetics. His most recent critical book is Irish Culture and Colonial Modernity, 1800-2000: The Transformation of Oral Space (Cambridge, 2011). He is also the editor of Cusp Books, a chap book press based in Los Angeles.

Olga Ridgway is a doctoral student studying with Alan Chow at Northwestern University. She has been a prizewinner of the Music Teachers National competition (Illinois State Competition), the Ibla Grand Prize International Piano Competition, the Thaviu-Isaac Piano Competition, Union League Piano Competition and the Central Asian Piano Competition. Olga received a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from Tashkent State Conservatory and subsequently studied at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, Belgium. Moving to Chicago in 2003, she received a full scholarship to study at Chicago College of Performing Arts at the studio of professor Ludmila Lazar and later completed a master of music degree from Roosevelt University.

Elisa Sutherland is a mezzo-soprano from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is a current second year Master’s student in Northwestern’s Voice and Opera program, where she has appeared as Ottavia in L’incoronazione di Poppea, Lucrezia in William Bolcom’s Lucrezia, Nancy in Albert Herring, Jennie Hildebrand in Street Scene, and as a special guest, Marlena von Schnapps, in Die Fledermaus. She graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern’s double degree program in 2012 with a Bachelor of Music in Voice and Opera and a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing.