Born in New York City in 1950, Arthur Sze is a second-generation Chinese American. He is the author of numerous books of poetry "Sight Lines" (2019); "Compass Rose" (2014); "The Ginkgo Light" (2009); "Quipu" (2005); "The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998" (1998); and "Archipelago" (1995). Sze is also a celebrated translator from the Chinese, and released "The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese" (2001).

His honors include an American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, a Western States Book Award for Translation, three grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2013, he was awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers magazine. He has served as Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University, a Doenges Visiting Artist at Mary Baldwin College and has conducted residencies at Brown University, Bard College, and Naropa University. Sze was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives.

Artist Armando Mariño was born in 1968 in Santiago de Cuba. He has been a recipient of grants and residencies including Art Omi Residency, Rijsakademie Fellowship in Amsterdam, the Pollock Krasner Grant, and the Bronx Museum Artist-in-Residence, among others. His work has been included in a number of exhibitions around the world such and his work is included in many private and public collections including the National Museum of Havana, Deutsche Bank Collection USA, Coca Cola Foundation in Spain, Shelley and Donald Rubin Collection, Howard Farber Collection, the Berado Collection in Portugal, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Spain, among others.