Poet, essayist, editor, translator, and teacher Denise Levertov was born in England in 1923 and moved to the United States in 1948. Though not part of any particular school of writing, she became an important voice in the American avant-garde and was particularly involved in anti-war and anti-nuclear activism, co-initiating Writers and Artists Protest against the War in Vietnam. She served as poetry editor of the Nation (1961-1962) and Mother Jones (1976-1978) and taught at a number of universities, including City College (CUNY); University of California, Berkeley; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Tufts University; Brandeis University; and Stanford University. She died in 1997.

Poet, editor, and teacher Mark Pawlak was born in Buffalo in 1948. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1960s, where he studied poetry with Denise Levertov. Like Levertov, he opposed the Vietnam War, leading him to give up his studies in experimental physics. Pawlak and Levertov exchanged correspondence until her death, and she wrote the introduction to his first book of poems, The Buffalo Sequence (Copper Canyon Press, 1977). He has taught mathematics, sciences, and creative writing, and currently teaches mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Since 1980, he has served as co-editor of Hanging Loose magazine and Hanging Loose Press books, started by several of Levertov’s former students.