Maxine Chernoff is both a poet and novelist. The Turning is her newest book of poems, praised by Aaron Shurin who says, "Maxine Chernoff's poems are born in the ache of the world in need of itself. Amid the false papers of emptied language, this writing envisions 'a home inside the neutral gleam,' where the heart of the authentic resides." She's published six books of fiction, including Signs of Devotion, which was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. With Paul Hoover she edits New American Writing, and with him she co-translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin, which won the 2009 PEN USA Translation Award.

Donna de la Perriere' s first book of poems is True Crime. Paul Hoover says it's a "sympathetic and sometimes harrowing family portrait of the American South. In such a fragile, wobbling world, language acts as the only shield. This is a wonderful and brave book, offering the true fictions of our actual darkness." She co-curates the Bay Area Poetry Marathon.

Rachel Loden' s new book of poems is Dick of the Dead. Ron Silliman says, "Rachel Loden works with Nixon the way Shakespeare worked with Lear, mining him for all of his many inner conflicts, using him to show us ourselves. Protest as we might-'We are not a crook.'-Loden knows and shows us better." Loden's first book of poems, Hotel Imperium, won the Contemporary Poetry Series Competition of the University of Georgia Press and was named one of the ten best poetry books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. Among her honors are a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Poetry from the California Arts Council, and a grant from the Fund for Poetry.

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