Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001) was born in New Delhi and grew up in Kashmir. He taught at the University of Utah, at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He published several volumes of poetry, including "The Beloved Witness: Selected Poems," "Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals," and posthumously, "The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems." 

Jim Hodges was born in 1957 in Spokane, Washington. He lives and works in New York. Hodges’ work explores themes of fragility, temporality, love, and death in a highly original and poetic vocabulary. He frequently deploys different materials and techniques: from ready-made objects to traditional media such as graphite and ink. Often disarmingly simple or executed with minimal means, Hodges’ works express a sentiment of deeply felt experience and encourage a visceral and communal response. Whether working in materials such as curtains woven from artificial silk flowers, metal chains, glass, or using saliva to create ink transfer impressions on paper, Hodges’ works are inhabited by the presence of the body. Incorporated in his choice of media and articulated in text and image is a narrative of human experience, one of life and death and of the proximity of contingency that affects us all.