Laura Boss, founder and editor of Lips, has received many awards for her own poetry including a first place in Poetry Society of America’s Gordon Barber Poetry Contest and three Poetry Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her six books of poetry include Reports from the Front (CCC) and Arms: New and Selected Poems (Guernica). She was the sole representative of the USA at the XXVI International Poetry Readings in Europe. More recent featured readings include The Dylan Thomas Centre in Wales and the 2010 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times. Her newest book of poetry is Flashlight (Guenica, 2010).

Gail Fishman Gerwin’s memoir Sugar and Sand earned finalist designation for the 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize and she has earned four honorable mentions for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Her poems appear in journals including Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Edison Literary Review, Tiferet, Smith College Poetry Center online, Caduceus, Adanna, U.S. 1 Worksheets, The Fib Review, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, and The American Voice in Poetry: The Legacy of Williams, Whitman, and Ginsberg. The Paterson, NJ, native is working on her second collection. She and her husband Kenneth live in Morristown and are parents of two daughters and grandparents of three boys and a girl.