James Ciano, Bobby Elliott, and Nick Martino in conversation

James Ciano is the author of The Committee of Men (Boa Editions, 2026), and an Associate Editor of Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis (Graywolf, 2026). He holds a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California, and his poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Bennington Review, The Hopkins Review, The Missouri Review, and The Yale Review. His reviews and writings on poetry have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the 2025-2027 Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University and lives in Decatur, Georgia.

Bobby Elliott is an award-winning poet and teacher. His debut collection of poems, The Same Man, was selected by Nate Marshall as the winner of the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and by Maya C. Popa as a finalist for the 2026 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Raised in New York City, he earned his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and his M.F.A. from the University of Virginia, where he was a Poe/Faulkner Fellow. His writing has appeared in Adroit, BOMB, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and sons.

Nick Martino is a poet and teacher from Milwaukee. He is the author of Scrap Book (Alice James Books, 2026), winner of the 2024 Alice James Editors’ Choice Award. His poems are published or forthcoming from Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Poetry Daily, and The Southern Review, among others. He has received support and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Community of Writers. A finalist for the 2024 Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, he holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, where he received the Excellence in Poetry Prize. He lives in LA.