Mary Ruefle is the author of numerous books including the forthcoming "Trances of the Blast" (Wave Books, 2013), "Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures" (2012), and "Selected Poems" (2010). She is also an erasure artist, whose treatments of 19th-century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and published in "A Little White Shadow" (Wave Books, 2006). She lives in Bennington, Vermont, and teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College.

Artist Francesco Simeti created "Bensonhurst Gardens" for the 18th Ave subway station in Brooklyn. The laminated glass work is based on the wallpapers for which he is known: collages that use politically and socially charged images from the mass-media. His work investigates nature and artifice, ranging from Renaissance and Baroque garden architecture to hunting.

Simeti's art appears in New York City public schools, the MACRO/ Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence), ART&IDEA (Mexico City) and Columbia University (New York City). His work has been exhibited in the United States and Europe, and appears in several museum collections.