Susan Settlemyre Williams, Blackbird associate literary editor, holds an MFA in poetry from VCU, as well as a BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a JD from the University of Richmond. She is retired from the practice of real estate law. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, Barrow Street, The Cream City Review, DIAGRAM, Calyx, Aethlon, and other journals; and her interviews and book reviews have appeared in several issues of Blackbird.  

Talvikki Ansel's first book of poems, My Shining Archipelago, was chosen as a winner by James Dickey for the Yale Younger Poets Series in 1996. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies New Young American Poets (Southern Illinois University, 2000) and The Pushcart Prize XXVI, and in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The Journal, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Shenandoah. Jetty is her second book.