Judy Schattner is a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist in North Carolina. She is a Certified Poetry Therapist and Clinical Hypnotherapist with a membership in the National Association of Poetry Therapists, National Board of Clinical Hypnotherapists and North Carolina Haiku Society. She is a mediator for the community for Mindful Living in Raleigh.

David Manning ,a California native, lives in Cary, North Carolina and is a member of the North Carolina Poetry Society, the North Carolina Writers Conference, and the Friday Noon Poets of Chapel Hill, with whom he has read his work on Public Television of Chapel Hill. He has won awards from the North Carolina Poetry Society, including its Poet Laureate Award in 1996 and again in 1998. His poetry has appeared in Pembroke Magazine, The Christian Century, Main Street Rag, Crucible, Potato Eyes, Wellspring, Free Lunch and other journals. His first poetry chapbook, "Negotiating Physics" was published in 1999 by Old Mountain Press. He has published four additional chapbooks: Poets Anonymous (2001), also by Old Mountain Press; The Ice-Carver (2004), winner of the Longleaf Chapbook Competition; Out After Dark (2003) and Detained by the Authorities (2007), both by Pudding House