Crystal Simone Smith (born September 15, 1973, Takoma Park, Maryland, U.S.A.) poet, indie-publisher, and educator. Author of three poetry chapbooks and Dark Testament: Blackout Poems (2023). Coauthored One Window’s Light, haiku by African American poets. Winner of the NC Poetry Society Bloodroot Haiku Award. Her Ebbing Shore: Haiku and Photographs won a THF Touchstone Distinguished Book Award (2022). Recipient of a Duke University Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. Member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective and the NC Haiku Society and the editorial board of THF’s Juxtapositions. Teaches in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and resides in Durham, North Carolina.

Cyndi Lloyd (born Cynthia Ann Golsan, September 29, 1969, Salt Lake City, Utah), artist, author, and poet. Earned a B.A. in English from Westminster College and served as editor-in-chief of ellipsis. Has worked as a tutor, a writing mentor, haiku teacher, moderator of the Inkstone Poetry Forum, and coeditor of Drifting Sands. Widely published in journals as well as the anthologies of the HSA, HNA, and Red Moon Press, among others. Haikai have received awards from Presence, and Cattails and won recognition in the Spiess, Kusamakura, Morioka, and Soka Matsubara competitions. Resides in Riverton, Utah.

Cynthia A. Henderson (born Cynthia Ann Kowalski, April 21, 1949, Acushnet, Massachusetts, U.S.A.), American teacher, bookkeeper, entrepreneur, and haiku poet and organizer. Member of the Santa Fe Haiku Study Group, the Haiku Society of America, and Haiku Canada. Served on the organizing committee for Haiku North America 2017. Lives in Santa Fe, N.M.

Cynthia Cechota (born Cynthia Ann Cechota, May 15, 1962, Joliet, Illinois, U.S.A.), American editor in financial services and haiku poet. Editor of the Haiku Dubuque group anthology. Won recognition in the Hawai‘i Education Association Contests, the Francine Porad Awards, and the Robert Frost Poetry Festival Haiku Contest. Haiku and haibun have appeared in major North American journals and anthologized in Kamesan’s World Haiku Anthology on War, Violence and Human Rights Violation, Haiku 2014 and Haiku 2015, and Haiku Society of America members’ anthologies. Resides in Dubuque, Iowa.

Dan Schwerin (born Daniel William Schwerin, August 23, 1963, Waukesha, Wisconsin), assistant to the bishop of the Wisconsin Conference of the United Methodist Church and poet. Published widely and anthologized in New Resonance 8 and Haiku 2014, 2015, 2016, among others, while his 2015 collection ⊕rs was honored in the Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards and the HSA Merit Book Awards. Resides in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.