Bruce Smith

Bruce Smith was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the author of six books of poems, The Common Wages, Silver and Information (National Poetry Series, selected by Hayden Carruth), Mercy Seat, The Other Lover, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Songs for Two Voices, and most recently Devotions, a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the LA Times Book Prize. He received the 2012 William Carlos Williams Award whose citation read, “Bruce Smith has seemingly inhaled the entire English language to date.” His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Partisan Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and many others. Essays and reviews of his have appeared in Harvard Review, Boston Review and Newsday. He teaches at Syracuse University.

Jules Gibbs

Jules Gibbs' first book of poems, Bliss Crisis, was published by The Sheep Meadow Press this fall. She is also the author of a chapbook of poems, The Bulk of the Mailable Universe, published by Dancing Girl Press in 2011. Her poems and essays have appeared in such journals as The American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review, Barrow Street, and Salt Hill, as well as in the Best New Poets anthology. She has been a fellow at the Ucross Foundation, and her collaborative work with photographer Kevin O’Connell was featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. Gibbs is currently a visiting lecturer at Syracuse University. In a former life, she served as an editor for The Woodstock Times and Almanac.

This project is made possible (in part) through a grant from the Dutchess County Arts Council, administrator of public funds through NYSCA's Decentralization Program.