A.B. SPELLMAN is a poet, jazz critic, former deputy chairman at the National Endowment for the Arts, and author of Things I Must Have Known, The Beautiful Days, and Four Jazz Lives. His Wesleyan collection, Between the Night and Its Music, won a 2025 American Book Award. Poems from that collection are featured on "Passion for Bach and Coltrane" with Imani Winds, which received the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Classical Compendium LAURI SCHEYER is Xiaoxiang Distinguished Professor and Director of the British and American Poetry Research Center at Hunan Normal University (China). Her books include Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry, The Heritage Series of Black Poetry, and A History of African American Poetry. She received a 2025 American Book Award for her work on A. B. Spellman's Between the Night and Its Music.