YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA is a professor and senior distinguished poet in the graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University. He is the author of over twenty collections of poetry, including Dien Cai Dau (Wesleyan, 1984), The Emperor of Water Clocks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), and Neon Vernacular (Wesleyan, 1993) for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Prize. OLIVER EGGER is a poet, editor, and journalist. He edited and compiled The Route 9 Anthology: A Collection of Poetry by Wesleyan University Students, Faculty, Staff and Middlesex County Residents (Wesleyan, 2022).