A Cave Canem alumnus, Tommye Blount is the author of Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books, 2020), a long anticipated debut collection praised for its brilliantly orchestrated chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. For Literary Hub he recalls the book’s inception: in one month while walking for exercise in the early morning hours being stopped twice by the Novi police for looking suspicious. Blount also authored What Are We Not For (Bull City press, 2016). A graduate from Warren Wilson College, he has been the recipient of a fellowship from Kresge Arts in Detroit and the John Atherton scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His work has been featured in Magma, New England Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Ecotone, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Detroit, he now lives in Novi, Michigan.

Nathan McClain is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017), a fierce and unflinching look at the bonds between father and son. From Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, at koi ponds and outside Eden, these poems search for answers to the question “how do we reckon with the past?” Discover more about this powerful, assured new voice in his Mentor & Muse and Woven Tale Press interviews. McClain is a recipient of fellowships from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The Frost Place, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson.  His poems and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Green Mountains Review, The Common, The Critical Flame, Poem-a-Day, and Zocalo Public Square.  He teaches at Hampshire College.

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