Toi Derricotte is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ 2021 Wallace Stevens Award and the Poetry Society’s 2020 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry. She is the author of 2019 National Book Awards Finalist, "I: New & Selected Poems," (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), "The Undertaker's Daughter," (2011), and four earlier collections of poetry, including, "Tender," winner of the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her literary memoir, "The Black Notebooks," received the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh, Derricotte co-founded Cave Canem Foundation (with Cornelius Eady) in 1996; served on the Academy of American Poets’ Board of Chancellors, 2012-2017; and currently serves on Cave Canem’s Board of Directors and Marsh Hawk Press’s Artistic Advisory Board.

Barbara Takenaga is known for swirling, abstract paintings in stunningly detailed compositions. She paints her kaleidoscopic, geometric compositions of dots and lines completely freehand in a practice that's both meticulous and meditative. Many of her compositions begin with a single circle from which the forms undulate, radiate, and recede in seemingly infinite space. Takenaga was the Mary A. and William Wirt Warren Professor of Art at Williams College, a position she held from 1985 to 2018. Her work has been widely exhibited at institutions and she is a recipient of the 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, among many other recognitions.