This poem came about as I was doing research on something else entirely, as one does, and was suddenly reminded of the story of Rahab and the flax.The rest just came from there.

—Mari Ness, regarding Rahab

What inspired this poem: This poem in an unholy merger of the universe of my novel-in-progress, which is in large part about the after effects of child sexual abuse, and an interesting autobiographical note: my birth mother never named me. I was simply "the baby" until she gave me up for adoption. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I went through name after name, and nothing stuck; when I later learned that I hadn't been given a name, I attributed my name-fluidity to that. In the twisted universe of my novel, why might a child not be named, or be un-named? What effects might namelessness have?

—Shira Lipkin, regarding nameless

The thought, "What would an ordinary person do?" We see so many treatments of warriors and nobles and tycoons in desperate situations. The way that every-day people deal with catastrophe is fascinating to me, too, and the title was a question for myself. Then the dog-whistle made me laugh; the girl making this list was one I'd like a lot.

—Bethany Powell, regarding Things you would pack when taken hostage.

I've always been fascinated by selchies and was at a poetry getaway where one of Peter Murphy's justly notorious prompts called for us to play around with a myth or fairy tale and P.O.V.

—Devon Miller-Duggan, regarding Marrying the Selchie

I've been thinking about the missing mother in many of Grimm's fairy tales, and a kind of longing for her I feel—and have always felt— when reading them. Of course, her absence makes possible all kinds of mayhem, violence, and self-discovery—in other words, story....but her absence also seems like a place-holder for her in a lot of the stories—she doesn't really feel gone to me. I wanted this poem to listen for narrative echoes of her through many favorite tales, and to be a convincing invocation.

—Sally Rosen Kindred, regarding Dear Fairy-Tale Mother

Some time ago, I read about a fascinating archaeological discovery: that c. 16,000 years ago, foxes were buried with people in such a way that their relationship clearly went beyond that of prey item. What that relationship was, we are unlikely to ever know for sure, but of course I had to explore the possibilities. One quite off-topic offshoot was my poem "In the Sun-Sweet Desert", which then became my story "Feed Me The Bone Of Our Saints", a secondary world fantasy in which there is a female-only society of human women sistered with female foxes; but I soon wanted to return to the idea in a much more straight-up historical way, telling the tale as true as I could. "Sister" is what I wrote while brainstorming that idea, trying to find a voice and a conflict. As I write this answer (at the very end of May), I'm drafting the prose version of that tale.

—Alex MacFarlane, regarding Sister

I've been talking with Amal El-Mohtar about the shapechanger poems I've been writing for my collection. She mentioned she'd love a poem about a silver hummingbird, but I immediately thought about bees. Next thing I knew, this poem happened.

—Rose Lemberg, regarding if all of her would turn into bees

My husband and I were married this past March in East Tennessee, his birthplace and where he was raised. I was born in another part of this region, but was raised in Alabama. Sitting on the porch of a log cabin the day before our wedding ceremony, I found myself thinking about geography, native flora and fauna, love, death and the passage of time - perfectly normal thoughts for a poet the day before her wedding! This poem grew from those thoughts.

—Alicia Cole, regarding The Dryad, on Marrying the Oak

Regarding the genesis of the poem, the imagery of the hands came to mind while I reflected on an acquaintance's troubled romantic relationship. The rest followed more or less organically.

—Dominik Parisien, regarding My Dead Hands Lover, I'm Leaving You

What inspired this poem? Getting a new tattoo on my left forearm, and, while I was at it, getting the one on my right forearm touched up. Besides these, I have two others: one on my left shoulder blade and one on my right hip. All of them are inscriptions, some form of writing. They're stories we carry in our skin.

—A.J. Odasso, regarding Ink Archaeologist

The old ATV series Sapphire and Steel, full of time and ghosts. Robert Aickman. The music of Colleen.

—Mat Joiner, regarding Sepia

Dream: Your lover is running a theater company in wartime, playing something very like the courts of Faerie (accessible by rail, which means it was either England or the past), which is how you wind up with an unhealing wound in your right hand and a worried feeling about its wider implications, and the stage-door photographer is George Mallory, still carrying the same camera he used to photograph his (unsuccessful—they both died) ascent of Everest with Sandy Irvine in 1924.

Me: What have we been smoking and why aren't I getting anything out of it?

—Sonya Taaffe, regarding Spirit Photography

The inspiration for this poem is its epigraph.

—Michelle Bannister, regarding Year-king