A longtime friend of and contributor to Conjunctions, C. D. Wright was one of her generation’s most iconic and influential poets. Her many books won her a host of major awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Griffin Prize, and a 2004 MacArthur Fellowship. Her collections One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana (Twin Palms Pub), with photographs by Deborah Luster, and One with Others (Copper Canyon) are passionate and ethical classics of documentary poetics.

Deborah Luster is best known for the series, One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, which she undertook in 1998 with poet C. D. Wright. This collection of photographic portraits portrays prisoners from three Louisiana prisons including the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, New Orleans Museum of Art, and other notable public and private collections.