CONTRIBUTORS

Kelley White   A New Hampshire native, studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty-five years. Mother of three, she is an active Quaker. Her poems have been widely published over the past decade, in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association and in several chapbook and full-length collections. She is the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in poetry.

Rachel Halls is best known by her friends as a sound designer, poetic fashionista, and avid tea drinker. She is greatly inspired by the sounds of electronic music and all things haute couture, often making references to both in all of her works. Interested in learning more? Seek her out at http://www.myspace.com/christinasdream

Gu Xie, member of Chinese Writers Association, born in Shanghai in 1960s.  He is the author of six collections of solo poetry: Selected Poetry of Gu Xie, Tai Ji, the Supreme Ultimate, State Symphony, Steps of Guangzhou, Pudong Symphony.  His poems have appeared in various well-known large-scale literary magazines like Lotus, Flower City, Muse, Hunan Literature, Guangzhou Literature and Art, People Literature Press Triennium Anthology, Chinese Writers Press Collection of Poetry,Flower City Selected Works for the 50th Anniversary of Guangdong Writers Association, Chinese Literature Press Panda Books.  In 2000, Gu Xie was invited to serve as College Writer at Guangdong Arts College for three years. Since 2003 he has been working as faculty in Guangzhou Writing and Research Centre. He has also served on the board of the Poetry Society in Guangdong Writers Assoc iation. As Vice-president of Guangzhou Writers Association, he continues to teach poetry as well as work on his own creative writing. Currently Gu Xie plans to produce a long epic poem.

John Grey   Australian born poet, playwright, musician. Latest book is “What Else Is There” from Main Street Rag. Recently in The English Journal, The Pedestal, Pearl and the Journal Of The American Medical Association.

Jonathan Greenhause travels the land as a Spanish interpreter and translator, but his true love lies in the intricate architecture of poetry, with its capacity for epiphany and its concomitant potential for extraordinary failure. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications throughout the country, including The Bitter Oleander, Bryant Literary Review, Interim, Many Mountains Moving, and Nimrod.

Bradley R. Strahan is a Former Fulbright Professor of Poetry & American Culture (2002-2004). For 12 yrs. he taught poetry at Georgetown Univ.. He is the director of VISIONS INTERNATIONAL ARTS and publisher of Visions-International. Since 1976 he has developed a worldwide following for his work, which includes several books of poetry and over 500 poems in such places as America, Christian Century, Cross Currents, Rattapallax, Virginia, Apostrophe, The Seattle Rev., The Christian Science Monitor, Poet Lore, Confrontation, First Things, Midstream, The Hollins Critic, Soundings East, Gargoyle, Southwestern Rev., Negative Capability, Sundog, etc.; in the U.K. in Orbis, Tribune, Nottingham Rev., Krax, etc. and elsewhere: Sources (Belgium), Poetry Monthly Shimunhak (Korea), The Salmon  (Ireland), Poetry Australia, etc.. He has been anthologized in many places and translated into French Spanish, Dutch, Serbian, Macedonian, Korean, etc.. He has lectured and read his work in America, Europe and Asia, For over 20 years he sponsored a series of international poetry readings at Rock Creek Gallery and other locations. He has won many awards for his poetry.
He was in Holland on a Vogelstein Foundation program from Nov., 2001 to Jan., 2002 (when he replaced John Ashbery as the American poet at the "Literaire Podia Amsterdam"). He was a Fellow during 2006 at the "Vertalershuis" in Leuven, Belgium.

Sankar Roy, originally from India, is a poet, translator, activist and multimedia artist living near Pittsburgh, PA. He is a winner of PEN USA Emerging Voices, author of three chapbooks of poetry– Moon Country, The House My Father Could Not Build and Mantra of the Born-free (all from Pudding House). He is an associate editor of international poetry anthology, Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami (Rupa Publication, India and Bayeux Arts, Canada). Sankar's poems have appeared or forthcoming in over forty-five literary journals including Bitter Oleander, Crab Orchard Review, Connecticut Review, Harpur Palate, Icon, Runes, Rhino, Tampa Review and Poetry Magazine.

Maureen Shay lives and writes in Salisbury, North Carolina.  She is currently an English teacher at Salisbury High School, where she has also taught Theatre Arts and where she encourages young people to investigate their interests in creative expression.  Her poetry has appeared in Tar River Poetry, as well as in anthologies such as Mountain Time and Wildacres Poetry

Jean Anderson's first collection In Extremis and Other Alaskan Stories received several awards, including a PEN Syndicated Fiction selection. Anderson has lived in Alaska since 1966 and writes mostly short stories. "Smallpox" is part of a collection-in-progress, "Bird's Milk: Stories of Alaska and Siberia."

Geer Austin’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Big Bridge, Colere, Parting Gifts, and Potomac Review,among others. He lives in northern Manhattan.

Daniel Coshnear - dan@coshnear.org - lives in Guerneville with wife and two children. He woks at a group home for men and women with mental illnesses and substance issues and he is author of a collection of stories, Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine 2000) Willa Cather Award winner.
Dane Myers lives in Albuquerque with Melinda and their three daughters Emily, Madeleine, and Natalie. His publishing credits include Willard and Maple, North Dakota Quarterly, and Fresh Boiled Peanuts. Although he has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico Dane continues to work part-time as a paramedic and full-time as a Mr. Mom/ next-to-last-place trophy husband.

Stephen Kessler is the author, most recently, of Burning Daylight (poems, Littoral Press); his translation (with Daniela Hurezanu) of Eyeseas, poems by Raymond Queneau, is due this summer from Black Widow Press, and his book of essays Moving Targets: On Poets, Poetry &Translation will be issued in the fall by El León Literary Arts. He is acontributing editor of Poetry Flash and the editor of The Redwood Coast Review.

Walter Bargen has published eleven books of poetry and two chapbooks. The latest are: The Feast, BkMk Press-UMKC, 2004, a series of prose poems, was winner of the 2005 William Rockhill Nelson Award; Remedies for Vertigo (2006) from WordTech Communications; and West of West from Timberline Press (2007). Theban Traffic is scheduled for publication in 2008. His poems have recently appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, New Letters, Poetry East, and the Seattle Review. He was just appointed to be the first poet laureate of Missouri. www.walterbargen.com

Kosrof Chantikian is the author of two earlier works of poems –
Prophecies & Transformations and Imaginations & Self-Discoveries. He
is editor of Octavio Paz: Homage to the Poet, and The Other Shore: 100
Poems by Rafael Alberti.
In 1979-80, 1980-81, and 1981-82 he was poet-in-residence at the San
Francisco Public Library. He edited KOSMOS: A Journal of Poetry from
1976-1983, and from 1980 to 2001, was general editor of the KOSMOS
Modern Poets in Translation Series. He has received grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the
San Francisco Foundation. His poems and prose have appeared in Amerus,
Ararat, Arete, Bleb, Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Green House,
KOSMOS, and Margins.
He lives in Larkspur, CA with his family.

Livio Farallo is co-founder and co-editor of Slipstream and a Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College.
He has been published extensively in the small press over the past 25 years and has been nominated for 3 Pushcart Prizes for Poetry.

Corinne Robins, poet, art historian and widely published art critic is the author of the text THE PLURALIST ERA, American Art 1968-80 and of five poetry collections, most recently TODAY’S MENU from Marsh Hawk Press. She teaches art criticism at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y. and is the coordinator of the Poets for Choice reading series at Ceres Gallery in New York City.

Judith Cody's poetry won awards from Atlantic Monthly and Amelia magazines, honorable mention from the Emily Dickinson Poetry Award 2002, was put forward for theLyric Recovery Award, 2004.  A poem with its archives is in the Smithsonian Institution's permanent Collection.
Poems are published in: Nimrod, New York Quarterly, South Carolina Poetry Review, Poet Lore,Cumberland Poetry Review, Xavier Review, Texas Review, Primavera, Phoebe, Louisville Review, Madison Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Westview, Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets, 2004. Anthology of Contemporary Poetry 2007, PEN Anthologies: Oakland Out load 2007, and Words Upon the Water 2006. She composes music, and wrote the composer biography, Vivian Fine: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, 2002; also, Eight Frames Eight, poems. She has finished a poetry manuscript,The Rumor (a Vietnam saga). Forthcoming: a photography book, Roses in Portraiture. www.judithcody.com

Patricia Cumming   I have two poetry collections, Afterwards, and Letter
from an Outlying Province from Alice James Books. I have taught at M.I.T. and most recently at Wheaton College. Poems have appeared in The Women’s Review of
Books, ACM, Home Planet News and elsewhere.

Richard Dokey's "The Barber's Tale" won The Hoepfner Award for the best story published in Southern Humanities Review in 2006. His stories are published widely and have won other awards. They have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and have been cited in Best American Short Stories and Best of the West. "Pale Morning Dun," his most recent collection, was published by University of Missouri Press in 2004. It was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and The American Book Award. He has other collections to his credit, notably "August Heat," published by Story Press, Chicago, and the novel "The Hollow Man," published by Delta West. River's Bend Press will publish his novel "The Hollywood Cafe."

Randall Brown teaches at Saint Joseph’s University. He holds an MFA from Vermont College and a BA from Tufts. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, The Evansville Review, The Laurel Review, Dalhousie Review, and others. He’s recently finished a collection of (very) short fiction, Mad To Live.
Also, as an editor with SmokeLong Quarterly, he’s had the pleasure of publishing short shorts by Dan Chaon, Steve Almond, Stuart Dybek, Sherrie Flick, Robert Shapard, Melanie Rae Thon, and many other exceptional writers. He’s also had the privilege of working closely with some amazing teachers, including Douglas Glover, Abby Frucht, Nance Van Winckel, Tern-Brown Davidson, Ellen Lesser, Kathi Appelt, and Pamela Painter.

Morrie Warshawski lives in Napa, CA. He makes a living helping nonprofits do strategic planning. He's been writing poems on and off for forty years, has appeared in a number of the small literary magazines, published a chapbook OUT OF NOWHERE (Press-22) and a number of limited edition artist books, one of which (PATTERNS OF OPPRESSION) is in the collection of MOMA NYC

Alan Catlin recently retired from his unchosen profession as a barman to devote more time to his written work. His most recent book of poetry is Self-Portrait as the Artist Afraid of His Self-Portrait from March Street Press.

Cathy Capozzoli was the guest editor of Many Mountains Moving: The Literature of Spirituality, a collection of creative works from 88 writers and artists from 6 countries and many spiritual traditions. Recent work has appeared in The Griffin, New Millennium Writings, Evansville Review, Owen Wister Review, The Binnacle, Meridian, Willard & Maple, Carquinez Poetry Review, Lake Effect, Tin Fish, Karamu, Mudfish, RiverSedge, Oregon East, Rock & Sling, and Hawai'i Review. She holds an MFA from Naropa, a Buddhist university in Colorado.

George Couch i'm 62 with two grown children, and the same wife for 27 years.
i'm retired, so i have the the luxury of time, to think and write, and try not to get in a rut.  some of my heros are brautigan, twain , and some stuff i pick up on bathroomwalls. i live on the banks of the Arkansas river in the arkansas delta, a great place
to observe.  it's like living at cannary row

Cheryl Hicks   I have had prose published in The First Line, Crate, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Southern Hum, and one of my memoirs is to be included in The Remembrance Project at Howard University. My poems have been published in Urban Spaghetti, Blue Fifth Review, Heliotrope, Makar, Snakeskin, Her Circle, Creative Soup, The Orphan Leaf Review, the delinquent, Autumn Sky Poetry, Silent Actor, Avatar Review, Word Riot, Halfway Down the Stairs, Monkey Kettle, and 103: The Journal of the Image Warehouse. I have been a featured poet at C/Oasis, am a previous recipient of the Paddock Poetry Award and presented poems from my series titled Conversations with the Virgin at the 2006 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference in Tucson, Arizona.

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard is the author of 15 books including 6 books of poetry. Her first book of poems "Journeys Over Water," was a winner of the quarterly Review of Literature contest. Her poems and articles have been widely anthologized. She is a Resident Scholar with the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.

Nancy Esposito's first book of poems was Changing Hands (Quarterly Review of Literature Contemporary Poetry Series VI).  Mêm’ Rain, a winner of the National Looking Glass Poetry Chapbook Competition, was published in 2002 by Pudding House Publications, which also published Greatest Hits 1978-2001 in 2003.  She has completed a manuscript of poems, entitled Lamentation with June Bug.  She received the Discovery/The Nation Award, Massachusetts Arts Lottery Grant, the Colladay Award, PSA Gordon Barber Memorial Award, Fulbright Grant to Egypt, and grants to Vietnam and Cambodia.   Her poems and translations have appeared in APR, The Nation, The Antioch Review, Southwest Review, Indiana Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others.  Her poems have been translated into Spanish and Vietnamese. 

Emilio DeGrazia, a long-time resident of Winona, Minnesota, founded Great River Review, a literary journal, in 1977. A first collection of short fiction, Enemy Country (New Rivers, 1984), was selected by Anne Tyler for a Writer’s Choice Award, and a novel, Billy Brazil (New Rivers, 1991), was chosen for a Minnesota Voices award. A second collection, Seventeen Grams of Soul (Lone Oak Press), received a
Minnesota Book Award, and Lone Oak published a second novel, A Canticle for Bread and Stones. He and his wife Monica also have co-edited anthologies for Nodin Press of Minneapolis, Twenty-Six Minnesota Writers (1995) and Thirty-Three Minnesota Poets (2000). Burying the Tree, published in 2006 by Plain View Press of Austin, Texas, is his first collection of creative prose.
Currently he continues to write fiction and essays, and hopes to be a
poet when he grows up.

J. D. Riso's short fiction and travel writing have appeared in numerous publications, including Prick of the Spindle, Identity Theory, Eclectica, BluePrintReview, and SmokeLong Quarterly. Her first novel, Blue (Murphy's Law Press), was published in 2006. She lives with her husand in Poland.

Donna D Vitucci helps raise funds for local nonprofits, while her head and heart are engaged in the lives of the characters mounting a coup in her head. If her eyes
appear vacant, you’ll know she’s in her alternate universe, following her "people" as they muck up their lives. Her stories can be found in dozens of print and online journals. Recent work appears, or is forthcoming, in Salt River Review, Front Porch
Journal, The Whitefish Review, Diner, Storyglossia, Cezanne’s Carrot, Boston Literary Magazine, Insolent Rudder,
and Another Chicago Magazine.

Elizabeth Bernays grew up in Australia then, in England, she obtained a PhD, worked for the British Government, and studied agricultural pests in developing countries. In 1983 she immigrated to the United States as a professor of entomology at the University of California Berkeley. Later, she was appointed Regents’ professor at the University of Arizona. Following twenty-five years in biology, she turned to creative writing, obtaining a Master of Fine Arts also at the University of Arizona. She has published essays and poems in a variety of literary journals, and was awarded first prize in the 2007 X.J. Kennedy nonfiction contest. Website: elizabethbernays.com.
yes, of course you may. please note that "Fragile, Perishable" is a reprint, and was first published in Turnrow, Summer 2004, by the University of Louisianaat Monroe.

Joneve McCormick’s poetry, articles and short stories have been published in a wide variety of hard copy and online literary and art periodicals and in several poetry anthologies. Small Bird Bones, a solo collection of poems, was published by The New Press (NYC) in 1993. Recently she edited the international anthology of poetry, World’s Strand (academici, UK), for publication. She hosts online journals, Soul to Soul and The Peregrine Muse.

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University¹s College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play, all from Rutgers University Press, and the recent novel Zublinka Among Women from Ken Arnold Books.

Dianna Henning holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College ’89 and won Eastern Washington University’s Fellowship to Ireland, Writer’s Center in Dublin. She has also won scholarships for Post Graduate work at Vermont College and for the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College, Vt. Dianna received a California Arts Council residency grant 1999 through 2001 and taught creative writing at Diamond View, a middle school in Susanville, CA. She also taught creative writing workshops in several California state prisons through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Project. She worked with the incarcerated for a total of nine years.
Dianna has published in these as well as in other magazines: Hawai’i Pacific Review’s, the Best of the Decade, 1998 to 2007 Anthology; Poetry International; Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day; Seattle Review; Swink Magazine, (on-line); Blue Fifth Review, (on-line); Fugue; Asheville Poetry Review; The Spoon River Poetry Review; South Dakota Review; The Red Rock Review; Psychological Perspectives; The Louisville Review and Crazyhorse. She’s a two time Pushcart Prize nominee in poetry, most recently nominated by the Hawai’i Pacific Review in 2006.
She and her husband Kam are the owners of a writers’ retreat in Northeastern California. thompsonpeakretreat@citlink.net

Carol Graser lives in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. She has read her poetry at many community events including fund-raisers, anti-war rallies and as a featured reader at poetry events around NY state. She hosts a monthly poetry reading series at Saratoga’s historic Caffe Lena that happens on the first Wednesday of every month. Her poetry has appeared in regional journals such as Screed, Salvage and Metroland as well as in numerous national publications like Lullwater Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, The Worcester Review, The MacGuffin and Eureka Literary Magazine

Donna Hilbert’s latest poetry collection is Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, Pearl Editions 2004.  Earlier books include Transforming Matter, Deep Red and Women Who Make Money and the Men Who Love Them (short stories), winner of England’s Staple First Edition biennial prize.  Ms. Hilbert appears in and her poetry is the text of the short film, “Grief Becomes Me,” the first in a trilogy of her poems to be included in a documentary on her work and life by award-winning filmmaker Christine Fugate.   Her biography is included in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry.  She lives in Long Beach, California where she is working on a play and conducting a master class in poetry.  Learn more at www.donnahilbert.com

Edward Butscher Books: Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (Schaffner Press, 2004), Child in the House: Poems (Canio's Editions, 1995), Eros Descending: A Selection (Dusty Dog Press, 1992)
 
Joan Payne Kincaid  I live with Rod, 3 cats, and a Russell fox terrier named Fancy who is smart enough to be a circus dog! I write and paint in Sea Cliff, Long Island. My
roots are on L.I. and my family goes back to the early settling of SuffolkCounty.
In 2005 Pudding House Publications brought out a collection of my poems covering 20 years of published work.Currently have work in Big Scream, Main Street Rag, Santa Clara Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, South Central Review, The South Carolina Review, Georgetown Review, Edgz, 88, Modern Haiku, Iconoclast, Lynx Eye, Yalobusha Review, Mother Earth Journal, Tule Review, Cairn, Unexpected Harvest, Ruth Moon Kempher’s Anthology from Kings Estate Press.
*New book of poetry, with Wayne Hogan just off the press entitled Blue Eyes Wise and Dancing.

Fraida Liba Levine earned her B. A. in English from UCLA, with a concentration in creative writing. She served as assistant poetry editor on the staff of Westwind, UCLA’s Literary Journal. Fraida Liba has contributed poetry to Transformation, Westwind, Vulcan, The Kerf, Heartlodge, Pepperdine University’s Expressionists, Fusion Literary Magazine, and Hunter College’s Olivetree Review. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and her three children.

Fred Ferraris   Books: The Durango Chronicles, Book One (Blue Marmot Press, 2004), Older Than Rain (Selva Editions, 1997), Marpa Point (Blackberry Books, 1976)
Anthologies: Prayers for a Thousand Years (Harper, 1999).
Journals: Audience, Cafe Irreal, Caveat Lector, Cold Mountain Review, Diner, Heaven Bone, Mad Blood, Marginalia, Orbis, Soundings East, Spout, Switched-On Gutenberg, thieves jargon, Wavelength, Worcester Review, Yalobusha Review

Luis Benítez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1956). Member of the Latin-American Academy of Poetry (USA), the International Society of Writers (USA), World Poets (Greece), the Advisory Board of Poetry Press (India) and the Argentinean Society of Writers. He has received the tittle of Compagnon de la Poésie, from La Porte des Poétes Association, France. His 9 books of poetry, 2 essays and 2 novels were published in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, USA and Venezuela. Between another local and international awards, he has received: La Porte des Poétes International Award (Paris, 1991); Biennial Award of the Argentinean Poetry (Buenos Aires, 1991); Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat Foundation Award of Poetry (Buenos Aires, 1996); International Award of Fiction (Uruguay, 1996); Primo Premio Tusculorum di Poesia (Italy, 1996) and 10me. Concours International de Poésie, accesit (Paris, 2003).

Sara J Sutter  is a recent graduate of the University of Scranton. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and a minor in English. She's interested in feminist art, with a concentration in poetry.
SJSutter@Gmail.com

Karen Neuberg’s poetry has appeared or is pending in Barrow Street, Columbia Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, Diner, Free Verse, Phoebe, Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, Stirring, and others. She is a Pushcart nominee and lives in Brooklyn NY and West Hurley NY.

Yvette A Schnoeker-Shorb 
Anthologies: The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press, 2004), 90 Poets of the Nineties: An Anthology of American and Canadian Poets (Seminole Press, 1998)
Journals: Clackamas Literary Review, Entelechy, Eureka Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hawai'i Pacific Review, Karamu, Midwest Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Poem, Puerto del Sol, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments, Weber Studies, Wild Earth

Tree Riesener is the author of Liminalog, a collection of ghazals and sijo.  Two new collections are forthcoming:  inscapes from Finishing Line Press and angel poison from Pudding House Publications.
She has published poetry and short fiction in numerous literary magazines, including 5_Trope, Evergreen Review, Ginosko, Blue Fifth Review, Loch Raven Review, Pindeldyboz, Identity Theory, Blood Lotus, Belletrist Review, NEBO, Acclaim, The Source, Hinge, Schuylkill Valley Review, Diner, Mad Poets Review, Albatross/Anabiosis, Lynx, The Ghazal Page, Fine Print, Anthology of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, Hidden River and Ernest Hilbert’s E-Verse Radio.  Three short stories—On The C Bus, Lighted Ships, and The BVM—have been staged in the Writing Aloud productions of  InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia. 
A winner in the Authors in the Park Short Story Competition, she also won a double first at the Philadelphia Writers Conference for the Short-Short Story and the Literary Short Story and was a Semi-Finalist in the Pablo Neruda Poetry Competition.  During summer 2002, she was a Hawthornden Writing Fellow at Hawthornden Castle, Scotland.  In 2004, she was awarded the inaugural William Van Wert Memorial Fiction Award by Hidden River Arts.
Active in Philadelphia-area spoken word activities, she has been a featured reader at The Well Fed Artist, La Tazza, The Philadelphia Ethical Society (on behalf of Poets & Prophets), Kelly Writers House, Robin’s Bookstore (for the Women’s Writing and Spoken Word Series and the Moonstone Series), The Book Corner, Barnes and Noble, and the Monday Night Poets series at the Philadelphia Free Library.  She is the Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

Mary Duquette has been a writer ever since she can remember, and sent in her first submission of a short story to a publisher when she was seven years old. Although the publishing company mainly dealt in scientific journals, they were kind enough to send her a very polite, slightly incredulous rejection letter.

Vic Compher's poetry has appeared recently in International Poetry Review (in both English and German) and in Mad Poet's Review. Vic is a poet, clinical social worker, and peace activist who lives in Philadelphia.

Pete Lee’s fiction has appeared in In Tenebris Lux, At Play, An Anthology of Maine Drama, The Licking River Review, Maine Lawyers Review, The Connecticut Review and will appear shortly in Nerve Cowboy.  In the daylight hours, he is a lawyer in private practice.
Currently, he is at work on a longer piece of (as yet) undetermined length entitled Call Him Lenny.
Pete lives in Yarmouth, Maine with his wife, Lynne, and their two sons, Spence and Travis.

Roy Scheele  Books: From the Ground Up: Thirty Sonnets by Roy Scheele (Lone Willow Press, 2000), Keeping the Horses (Windflower Press, 1998), Short Suite (Main-Traveled Roads, 1997).
Anthologies: To the Clear Fountains (Dolphin Press, 2002)
Journals: American Scholar, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Formalist .

Craig Saunders:  I am currently aged 35, although that is likely to change at some point in the near future. I like to write in the evenings, when my wife has gone to sleep and I can use dirty words.
For the last few years I have been writing full time. I have had the good fortune to have several short stories published, but I still live in ignominy in a small pauper’s shack in the Norfolk countryside…that’s on the right hand side of England…but only if you look at it the right way up…no, turn the map the other way.
I have great plans for the future. My seventh Magnus Opium will soon be rejected, whereupon I can shelf it and continue writing short stories, which is much more fun, far less demanding and only costs a pound to submit, which ideal as that’s all I get from my yearly crop of turnips, less turnip tax. 

Graham Hardie:  I am currently living in the west end of Glasgow. I have been writing poetry since I left University in 1997. I have an MA Honours Degree in Sociology and Social Policy. I spent seven years of my childhood in Nigeria and then I lived with my family in Helensburgh until I left home when I was seventeen. I attended The Glasgow Academy for six years and this is where my interest in poetry began. My poetic influences include Ted Hughes, Patti Smith, Rupert Brooke and Michael Longley. The critic Andy Manders said I wrote about "love, pain and consciousness" . My favourite book of poems is "Crow" by Ted Hughes. I have an interest in the Tarot, Astrology and the symbolism of myths, legend and nature. Also there is a sense of urban realism in some of my poetry which is indicative of the environment I have lived in. I admire the novels of Camus, Sartre, Octave Mirbeau, Thomas Hardy, Orwell, Laurie Lee and the "Outsider" by Colin Wilson and I am interested in the art of Turner, Picasso, Monet, Rembrant, El Greco and Jacques Louis David. I remember writing some of the lyrics of a U2 song on the album Joshua Tree into an English essay for school and this was a time when I first became aware of the power and significance of words to express the deepest of emotions; furthermore, Led Zeppelin were to shape my early sense of the ability of language to convey the true meaning of life, love and loss. Finally my poetry has religious overtones which represents my faith in a divine being and the spiritual awareness of the journey I have been on so far.

john sweet, b. 1968, single father of 2. believer in writing as catharsis. eater of souls. plenty of tummy-ticklin' fun to be found at blog.myspace.bleedinghorsedenied.com

Ronda Broatch is the author of Some Other Eden, (Finishing Line Press, 2005). Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web, Ronda is the recipient of the 2005 Kay Snow Poetry Award, 2006 WPA William Stafford Award, and 2007 Artist Trust GAP Grant. Her work appeared recently on Verse Daily.
Jane Ormerod was born on the south coast of England and moved from London to New York City in 2004. Her work appears in numerous US and UK publications including 21 Stars Review, Arsenic Lobster, eratio postmodern poetry, failbetter, and Word Riot. A spoken word CD, Nashville Invades Manhattan, was released in 2007 and an anthology, A Cautionary Tale: Peer into the Lives of Seven New York Performing Poets (Uphook Press), will be published in early 2008.
A regular on the New York live poetry circuit, in January 2007 Jane toured the west coast - Vancouver, Canada, down to San Francisco - as part of the Perpetual Motion Roadshow. Recently she returned to California for more readings and an interview on KFJC Radio. Her website is www.janeormerod.com.

Thomas Hedlund Several years following his graduation from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan with a B.A. in Psychology. He has earned honors for his short story “Power Windows” in The Writer’s Journal, a national publication, has published several articles, poems, and other fiction in publications and collections such as More Sugar, Painted in the Forest, and Immortal Verses.  His story “Ripples” appeared in the spring 2006 issue of The Storyteller. He was a contributing member of Morningside Writers Group based in New York City, a professional network of writers and editors, for six years.
Enrolled in an MFA in Creative Writing program at National University and earning honors in the process with an emphasis on Screenwriting.
www.GThomasHedlund.com.

Terri Glass has coordinated the Poets in the School program in Marin County, CA for many years and teaches poetry workshops for educators nationally.
Her poetry has appeared in:
Anthologies: My Song is my Light (California Poets in the Schools, 2007), Hope In the Form of Stripes (California Poets in the Schools, 2006), Volume 13 (Drumvoices Revue, 2005), My Pencil of Dreams (California Poets in the Schools, 2004), Nest of Freedom (California Poets in the Schools, 2002), Year 2000, an anthology (Nevada County Poetry Series, 2000), To Honor a Teacher (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1999), Beside the Sleeping Maiden (Aretos Press, 1997)
Journals: Avocet, Convolvulus
http://www.terri@thefoxpath.net/

Karen K. Ford was born & raised in the City of Orange, in Southern California. She began her writing career in high-school, as editor-in-chief of the Villa Park "Oracle," and later put herself through Cal State Fullerton by freelancing ad copy. She moved to Ashland, Oregon in 1989 and worked as marketing director for a small winery (some grape stomping was involved) and, later, for a manufacturer of high-end audio equipment, where she mostly kept her shoes on. After 13 years in Southern Oregon she returned to Los Angeles to pursue fiction writing full-time. She lives in Mandeville Canyon with her husband, writer S.L. Stebel, and their Welsh Corgi, Indigo. She is a contributing editor for "Launchpad" magazine, and her short stories have appeared in "Goliards" and "Man's Story 2." She is a two-time winner of the Excellence in Writing Award from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. She recently completed her first novel, "Salvage," which is currently being offered for publication by the Congdon Agency.

Robert Joe Stout  Books: They Still Play Baseball the Old Way (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1994), They Still Play Baseball the Old Way (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1994), The Blood of the Serpent (Algora, 1994), Swallowing Dust (Red Hill Press, 1976), Miss Sally (Bobbs-Merrill, 1973).
Journals: Beloit Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Confluence, Georgetown Review, Georgetown Review, Interim, Interim, Mid-American Poetry Review, Mid-American Poetry Review, South Dakota Review, South Dakota Review, Whetstone

Mary Dugan:  Hailing from the NW suburbs of Chicago, Beth earned her BA in Psychology at the University of Iowa. Beth is an MFA candidate in the Fiction Writing program at Columbia College and works full time as a writer for a small financial consulting firm.
She is a contributing reviewer for Time Out Chicago, New City, Bookslut.com and UR Chicago; her writing has appeared in The Banana King, The South Loop Review and Fictionary.

Sheila E. Murphy's work has been published widely in books and magazines. A book-length collection entitled A SOUND THE MOBILE MAKES IN WIND: 50 AMERICAN HAIBUN has just been released from Mudlark, and is viewable at www.unf.edu/mudlark. Her FALLING IN LOVE FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU SYNTAX: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS appeared from Potes & Poets Press in 1997. Sun & Moon Press will bring out LETTERS TO UNFINISHED J. as the winner of its 1996 Open Poetry Competition judged by Los Angeles poet Dennis Phillips. Murphy has been writing poetry and submitting work for publication since 1978. Her first appearance in print was in SALT LICK magazine, edited by James Haining.

Gunta Krasts Voutyras was born in Liepaja, Latvia. Am multi lingual, a writer and a fiber artist. Spent the start of WW II in underground trenches in my parents' homestead. Due to politics of the time were sent with my family, minus my father, to Nazi Germany. Traveled across the Baltic sea in the hold of a Nazi hospital ship. With the horses. Criss crossed Germany in cattle cars with the doors bolted from the outside. Periodically we were dumped off in Nazi detention camps, situated in the same way as Dachau, without the ovens. Treatment of all of us refugees was inhuman. Mass showers, our hair washed with gasoline, cold water for the so called "shower", beatings, rotten potatoes cooked in water as our once a day meal. Once the war ended we found ourselves in the American Zone, in a Displaced Persons Camp in Esslingen am/Neckar. From there traveled to USA under a law issued by Pres. Harry Truman. With a fine tooth comb UNRRA (United Nations Relif and Rehabilitation Agency) scrutinized our health, education, intellect, political affiliations of the past, our goals. In 1949 arrived in New York without a word of English. And with thirty dollars between five of us given to us by the Church World Service. Went to public schools in New York City. After graduation from High School married. Have two grown children. I started writing in the DP Camps, at age eleven. At that time wrote poems, short biographical essays. My passion was and is reading. Am published on the Internet in Helium.com, Poetry.com, in Hugh Downs last book, "My America", have essays in various other venues. Am working on a novel.

Rita Dahl (born 1971) is a Finnish writer and freelance-editor. She graduated in Political Science at the University of Helsinki and also holds a BA in Comparative Literature. Her debut poetry collection, Kun luulet olevasi yksin, was published in 2004 (Loki-Kirjat), and her second book, Aforismien aika (PoEsia), came out in the spring of 2007. Her travel book about Portugal, Tuhansien Portaiden lumo - kulttuurikierroksia Portugalissa (Avain) was published a month later.
She was editor-in-chief of the poetry magazine Tuli & Savu, in 2001 and also edited a cultural magazine, Neliö (www.page.to/nelio), which had a special issue on Portugal, for whose printform Dahl was responsible.
In 2007 she is publishing a portrait about the Finnish poet Jyrki Pellinen (PoEsia). Dahl is also editing an anthology of Central-Asian (and international) women writers (Like). This anthology includes speeches that will be given in the meeting of Central-Asian women writers arranged by the Finnish PEN, as well as pieces of fiction. She is editing and translating an anthology of Contemporary Portuguese Poetry into Finnish.
Dahl is a vice-chairperson of Finnish PEN.

William Jablonsky is the author of The Indestructible Man: Stories (Livingston Press, 2005). His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Phoebe, the Beloit Fiction Journal, the Florida Review, and the Southern Humanities Review. He lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin with his wife and three surly cats, and teaches writing and interdisciplinary humanities at Carroll College.

Lisa Haviland  Journals: Another America, Dufus, Other, Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Superhighway, Wicked Alice.
hazeablaze.blogspot.com

 

Ellen Reich teaches creative writing for Emeritus College, a division of Santa Monica College. She has had hundreds of poems and stories published in the Los Angeles Times, Artlife, Slant, Mudfish, Lynx Eye, ACM, Spillway, Coe Review, Oyez Review, etc. She has won writing awards from DA Center for the Arts, Blue Unicorn, Verve, Z Miscellaneous, Cape Cod Times, and others. She was a finalist in the 2004 Pearl Poetry Prize and a semifinalist in the 2005 Flume Press Poetry Contest. Her work has been included in a number of anthologies, among them, Blue Arc, Tebot Bach Press. She served as judge for the first poetry contest held by Ventura County Writers Association. A collection of her poetry along with three other poets is entitled 4 Los Angeles Poets. Her chapbook, Reverse Kiss, was editor’s choice and published by Main Street Rag in 2005. Also in 2005 a full length book of her poetry was released by Conflux Press entitled The Gynecic Papers.
Ellen is also an artist and has had her work in the Weisman Museum of Art and Ojai Valley Gallery. She recently received two first place awards from the Malibu Art Association. Her art has been published in Red Dancefloor, Vernal Calibrations, and Isis Rising. She was profiled in the Los Angeles Times as a poet and artist in 2004.

Michael Ogletree is the poetry editor for SUB-LIT Literary Journal. He just wrapped up a ten-year stint as an undergraduate. Michael recently defected to Germany with a graduate fellowship at Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz to study English literature. Weird, huh? His new work recently appeared or is forthcoming in BlazeVOX, Lily Literary Review, Right Hand Pointing, and Identity Theory, among others. His mother says his poems sound pretty, but she doesn't always know what they mean.

Regina O'Melveny is a writer, assemblage artist, and teacher at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Her prize-winning work has been published in literary magazines including The Bellingham Review, Rattapallax, The Sun, The LA Weekly, and Passages North. Her first book Blue Wolves, won the Bright Hill Press poetry award in New York. Recently she was the 2007 Poetry Award Winner for Conflux Press, where her work will be published as an artist's book.

Shannon Prince is a creative writing major and junior at Dartmouth College. In addition to writing, she is an activist for indigenous and African issues, a ceramics maker, and a travel addict. She has been published in Frodo's Notebook, Falcon Wings, KUHF magazine, Imprint, Rice University's Writers in the Schools Magazine, Illogical Muse, Damn Good Writing, Lost Beat Poetry, Haggard and Halloo, Houston Literary Review, Words on Paper, Bewildering Stories, The Smoking Poet, Muscadine Lines, Ragand, Prick of the Spindle, International Zeitschrift, Conceit Magazine, Snow Monkey, Paradigm, Words Myth, and The Green Muse. She also won Dartmouth's Thomas Ralston Prize for creative writing.
Annie Clarkson is a poet and fiction writer living in Manchester, England. Her first collection of prose poems/poetry is Winter Hands, and will be published by Shadow Train Books in August 2007.
You could also put a link to my MySpace site: www.myspace.com/annieclarkson

Grace Cavalieri is the author of fourteen books of poetry and 21 produced plays; she produces/hosts public radio’s "The Poet and the Poem," now from the Library of Congress via NPR, celebrating its 30th year on air in 2007. She is the founder of two poetry presses in Washington DC. She holds the 2006 Bordighera Poetry Award and a 2005 Paterson Prize for Poetry. Her newest play "Quilting the Sun" received a world premiere at Centre Stage,S.C. 2007.

Therese Halscheid
Books: Uncommon Geography (Carpenter Gothic, 2006), Without Home (Kells Media Group, 2001)
Journals: 13th Moon, Albatross, Bellevue Literary Review, Grasslands Review, Karamu, Lullwater Review, Midwest Quarterly, New Millennium Writings, Paterson Literary Review, Rhino Magazine, Sojourner, Spindrift, The Alembic, White Pelican Review

Lisa Harris  Born in Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania, Lisa Harris spent the first fifteen years of her life in the Allegheny Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountain Range. Educated at Wyoming Seminary, Bard College, Armstrong Atlantic University, Avery School of the Arts and the State University of New York, she has worked as a bartender, school teacher, creative writing instructor, administrator and consultant. She lives with her family in the Southern Tier of New York.
She has received support for her writing from two Constance Saltontall Foundation Residencies, (Ithaca, NY); three Landsmen Fellowships (Avery School of the Arts, Annadale-on-Hudson, NY); and one writing residency at Hambidge Center, (Rabun Gap, Georgia).
Lisa Harris’s short stories have appeared in The Distillery, Ginosko, The MacGuffin, The Habersham Review, Nimrod International, Phoebe, Feminism 3: The Next Generation in Fiction, Second Word Thursday Anthology, Cantaraville, The American Aesthetic, Lonzi’s Fried Chicken, Boxes, a chapbook, winner of The Bright Hill Press Fiction Award, Low Country Stories, winner of The Bright Hill Fiction Award.
Allegheny Dream, The Distillery, Motlow State Community College, Lynchburg, Tennessee, Dawn Copeland, edt.; Allegheny Angel, Ginosko, Fairfax, California, Robert Paul Cesaretti, edt.; Of Two Minds, The MacGuffin, Schoolcraft Collee, Livonia, Michigan, Steven A. Dolgin, edt.; Resurrecting the Quick, The American Aesthetic, American Aestheic Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Jerrold S. Freitag, edt.; Where the River Meets the Rain, Bright Hill Fiction Award Chapbook, Low Country Stories, Treadwell, NY, Bertha Rogers, edt.; and Feminism 3, HarperCollins/Westview, Boulder, Colorado, Irene Zahava, edt.; Into the Current, The Habersham Review, Piedmont College, Demorest, Georgia, Frank Gannon, edt.; Painted Buntings, Phoebe: Gender and Cultural Critiques, State University of New York at Oneonta, Kathleen O’Mara, edt.; and Cantaraville, NYC, Cantara Christopher, edt.; Shedding, Bright Hill Fiction Award, chapbook, Low Country Stories, Treadwell, New York, Bertha Rogers, edt.; Splitting Sticks, Lifting Stones, Nimrod International, University of Tulas, Oklahoma, Francine Ringold, edt.; and winners of the Bright Hill Press Fiction Award, chapbook BOXES, Bertha Rogers, edt.; Battles are Fought and Won, The Second Word Thursday Anthology, Treadwell, New York, Bertha Rogers, edt.

Stephanie Dickinson’s fiction has appeared in Waterstone, Northwest Review, Mudfish, Portland Review, Green Mountains Review, Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, among others. Along with Rob Cook she co-edits the literary journal Skidrow Penthouse. Half Girl, her first novel, will be published this year by Spuyten Duyvil. Her story “A Lynching in Stereoscope” was reprinted in
2005 Best American Series Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers. And she is a 2006 fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Road of Five Churches, a short story collection, recently was released by
Rain Mountain Press.

E.M. Schorb's work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, Southwest Review, The Yale Review, The Chicago Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, The American Scholar, Stand (England), The Notre Dame Review, 5 AM, Rattle, and the New York Quarterly, among others.

Michael Hettich's two most recent books are SWIMMER DREAMS (Turning Point) and FLOCK AND SHADOW: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (New Rivers Press), both published in 2005. He has a new chapbook, MANY LOVES, forthcoming from Yellow Jacket Press in April. michaelhettich.com

Louis E. Bourgeois was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in the Slidell/LaCombe area, as well as East New Orleans on Bayou Sauvage.  In 1996 he earned a B.A. from Louisiana State University in English and in 2002 was the first graduate of The University of Mississippi’s MFA program in creative writing.  He has published translations, fiction, memoirs, poetry, and interviews in over two hundred magazine and journals in North America, Europe, and Asia.  In 2004, he was the winner of the University of Milwaukee’s Cream City Review’s poetry contest for his poem “The Shed:  The Daughter of Shadows Speaks from Max Beckmann’s The Dream (1921).”  Other awards include, The Robert Penn Warren Award, the Common Ground Review’s poetry award, an Excellence Award from the Dana Literary Society, three Editor’s Choice Awards, four Pushcart nominations, as well as an artist grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission.  Bourgeois’ books include, Through the Cemetery Gates, The Distance of Ducks, The Animal, Cora Falling Off the Face of the Earth, White Night, Fragments of a Life Thirty-two Years Gone, OLGA and a forthcoming collection of short prose, The Gar Diaries.  In 2006, his poetry was accepted for inclusion in Scrivener’s Best American Poetry 2007.  Bourgeois is also co-founder and editor of VOX, an independent experimental literary journal based in Oxford, Mississippi. 

Mia Laurence lives in Fairfax, California with her husband and two children. She often finds herself telling (and sometimes writing) stories about talking bugs.

Adrianne Marcus is a full time writer.  As a poet, Adrianne Marcus has published over 300 poems, ranging from small magazines such as Southern Poetry Review, Descant, Shenandoah, Painted Bride Quarterly, Thin Air, Vol. No., Puckerbrush, Miller’s Pond, Choice, Massachusetts Review, to anthologies such as White Trash, This is Women's Work, New Poets: Women, Contemporary Poetry of North Carolina, and Imagining Worlds. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry Ireland, Paris Review, Spark, Art Life, and The Nation. In addition, she has three books of poetry to her credit, The Moon is a Marrying Eye, (Red Clay Press) Faced With Love,(Copper Beech Press) and Child of Earthquake Country (New World Press), as well as two chapbooks, Lying Cheating and Stealing (Pteradactyl Press) and Journeys, Destinations, (Small Poetry Press, 1996) and Magritte's Stones, a chapbook published in Belfast, Ireland. Her last poetry chapbook was published by Wicked Alice Press and is titled The Resurrection of Trotsky.
As a free-lance journalist her non-fiction is primarily food and travel oriented. She has published widely in such newspapers and magazines as Parade, Menus, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Good Food, Cooking Light, Detroit Monthly, Image, World & I, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, California Living, Town And Country and magazines devoted to Scandinavia, such as Ex. She has published one of the first books on Chocolate, The Chocolate Bible (G.P. Putnam's Sons) and an alternate Book-of-The-Month Selection, The Photojournalist: Mark & Leibovitz (Petersen Press, Thames & Hudson).
In fiction, Marcus has published a book of humor with Co-Author William Dickey, Carrion House World of Gifts, (St. Martin's Press) and her fiction has appeared in such magazines as Descant, Red Dog, Confrontation, Cosmopolitan, Force10; her story, The Paincaller, is in a new anthology of American women's work, published by the University of Tennessee, Blair House, Prentice and Hall Publishers, 1997and her stories, Vintage Weather and The Singular Tense are due out in The Crescent Review .Singular Tense appeared in Ginosko. Her story, Hour of the Wolf, appeared in Pembroke Magazine from the University of North Carolina, Pembroke.
Marcus lives in San Rafael, California with her husband, Ian Wilson, fours Silken Windhounds and two Borzoi.

Francine Witte  Books: The Magic in the Street (Owl Creek Press, 1994)
Anthologies: Poetry from Sojourner (University of Illinois Press, 2004)
Journals: Bellingham Review, Calliope, Connecticut River Review, Florida Review, Outerbridge, Poet & Critic, Tar River Poetry Review

Kirby Congdon was encouraged to write poetry by his third-grade teacher at the West Chester, Pa., State Teacher’s College’s Demonstration School, but he was brought up in rural Connecticut where he was drafted, before he had shaved, for service in Europe in World War II. After college and post-graduate years on the G. I. Bill at Columbia he worked in New York City as a typesetter for encyclopedia houses and the Brooklyn Heights Press.
Professor Emeritus of English, Long Island University, Ray C. Longtin, who has followed Congdon’s work since his very first days in college, states, “Kirby has not been in the mainstream of his time, but he has been very much a part of the avant garde and a creative but independent force as poet, editor and critic. He deserves, and will some day get, the attention that he merits.”
Meticulous in regard to both ideas and language, his collections cover industrial ma­chines of city life, motorcycle fantasies, comic-strip heroes, animals, a memoir of rural Amer­ica, regional subjects of Fire Island Pines and Key West, as well as miscel-laneous poems on conundrums of time and space in a new century.
His crank letters, one-act plays, and select­ed poems are published. Small-press periodicals have printed over 75 essays along with countless reviews and letters on current activities. Poems have been reprinted in high-school course bo­oks, and in anthologies of literary surveys as well as in current collections of poetry.

Greggory Moore is a SoCal resident, a civil libertarian and a copy editor for Skratch Magazine. His short story, "I Dream of Bicycles," is a section of his recently-completed first novel, Story Telling of Death and So Many Other Things.

Dennis Saleh
Books: This Is Not Surrealism (Willamette River Books, 1993), First Z Poems (Bieler Press, 1980) Journals: Art/Life Limited Editions, Bitter Oleander, Happy, Nedge, Ozone, Paris Review, Pearl Magazine, Phantasmagoria, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Psychological Perspectives, Social Anarchism, Wavelength

Philip Kobylarz
Recent work of P.Kobylarz appears or will appear in Connecticut Review, The Iconoclast), Visions International, New American Writing, Prairie Schooner, Dragonfire and has appeared in Best American Poetry.

Andrena Zawinski hails from Pittsburgh but lives and teaches in Oakland, CA. Her full collection, Traveling in Reflected Light, was released as a Kenneth Patchen competition winner from Pig Iron Press. Her lastest chapbook is Greatest Hits 1991-2001 from Pudding House. She has a poetry dvd forthcoming. Zawinski's writing appears widely in print and online, and she is Features Editor at www.PoetryMagazine.com

Tim Bellows, with a graduate degree from the Iowa Writers´ Workshop, teaches writing at Sierra College in Northern California and is devoted to lakes, mountains, and inner travels. He’s twice been nominated for the Annual Pushcart Prize, and his book Sunlight From Another Day – Poems In & Out of the Body has just gone live from AuthorHouse Press out of Bloomington (see Amazon.com).
He edits a monthly e-newsletter called Lightship News. It welcomes subscribers through star999@sbcglobal.net. If you’d enjoy some perspectives from “an unabashedly spiritual poet in an increasingly cynical world” (Todd Temkin), this is your golden spot. Finally, Tim is administrator of the blog at golden.timbellows.com – for trail-trekkers, mystics, and lovers of language.

Ivan Arguelles, of Mexican-American background, was born in 1939.
He grew up in Mexico City, Los Angeles and Minnesota.
Graduated from Rochester (Minn.) High School in 1956, he then attended the University of Minnesota and the University of Chicago, where he received his BA in Classics (1961). Later education includes a year at New York University (1962) and Vanderbilt University (1967-68) where he received an MLS (Library Science).
He has worked as bookstore manager in Chicago (1962-66); as a Berlitz teacher in Macerata, Italy (1967); and as a Professional Librarian: New York Public Library, 1968-78; University of California Berkeley ,1978-2001. He is now retired and lives in Berkeley CA.
He is co-founder and editor of the now defunct Pantograph Press.
His many poetry publications include:
Instamatic Reconditioning, 1978
The Invention of Spain, 1978
Captive of the Vision of Paradise, 1982
Tattooed Heart of the Drunken Sailor, 1983
Baudelaire’s Brain, 1988
Looking for Mary Lou , 1989
“That” Goddes, 1992
Hapax Legomenon, 1993
Madonna Septet, 2000
Inferno, 2005.
Looking for Mary received the 1989 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Richard M. Berlin, M.D. is the author of HOW JFK KILLED MY FATHER, winner of the 2002 Pearl Poetry Prize and published by Pearl Editions. Dr. Berlin was born in 1950, grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey and received his undergraduate and medical education at Northwestern University. His poetry appears monthly in “Poetry of the Times,” a featured column in Psychiatric Times, the most widely read and influential psychiatric publication in America. He is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and practices psychiatry in a small town in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts.

devin wayne davis, once called "ink (or inc.)" in an seaside vision, has written well-over 2, 000 poems; he likes concise verse.
his work is printed in the sacramento anthology: 100 poems; sanskrit; dwan; poetry depth quarterly; dandelion; coe review; rattlesnake; taproot; and 38 chapbooks. selections can be found on-line, at these fine sites: howling dog press; del sol review; wordslingers; perihelion; pierian springs; locust magazine; ginosko; kota press; octavo; lifix; jones av.; pig iron malt; great works; la petite ‘zine; stirring; offcourse; rio arts; wandering dog; poems niederngasse; whimperbang; kookamonga square; wheelhouse; chiron review; eratio; split shot; poetry magazine; poetry monthly; fullosia; new verse news; penhimalaya; wordslaw; aurora review, muscadine lines; toe tree journal; pcm; down in the dirt; soma; tmp; haiku scotland; medusa’s kitchen; spam; and zambomba. thank you all.
davis has read as a feature poet at major book retailers; he has addressed citizens and lawmakers on the northern steps of the california state capitol, and has read for annual poetry events at the crocker art museum. davis reviewed movies for a best-selling paperback guide; he has written for sacramento, ca. arts & entertainment weeklies, and worked for ups and the state.
davis served in the u.s. army. he visited spain, germany, switzerland, france, and was last assigned to ft. bragg, n.c. as a photojournalist.
davis earned a bachelors degree in journalism and history. davis has hiked mt. whitney 3x. davis has three daughters, and has had testicular cancer. he’s a leo. townee_towne@hotmail.com.

Mark Terrill’s grandmother babysat the young Ernest Hemingway in Oak Park, Illinois, and gladly used to explain that the reason he wrote “all that crazy stuff” was because she once dropped him on his head as an infant. Mark’s recent publications include a collection of translations, Whispering Villages: Seven German Poets, from Longhouse Poetry, and Postcard from Mount Sumeru, a Chapbook of the Quarter Club selection from Bottle of Smoke Press. http://home.arcor.de/markterrill

Gary Lundy lives in dillon, montana where he is a professor of english at the university of montana-western. his writing has appeared in various magazines and journals, most recently red owl, iodine poetry journal, edgz, plain brown wrapper, moria poetry journal, and pacific coast journal. he has work forthcoming in pudding magazine, snow monkey, karamu, ginosko, buckle &, fluent ascension, clara venus, and heeltap. in his spare time he builds guitars and mandolins.

S. D. Lishan is an Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University, where he teaches courses in creative writing, poetry, critical writing, and the literature of the fantastic. His poems, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in the Bellingham Review, Xconnect, Barrow Street, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Bellingham Review, ForPoetry.com, Kenyon Review, The National Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, In Possse Review, Mudlark, Arts & Letters, New England Review, Verse Daily and others. He also writes lyrics for songwriter, Andrea Perry. Her third CD, River of Stars, containing a number of their collaborations, will appear in the autumn, 2006. He has just completed a new volume of poems, and, as of this writing, he is currently in the final revision stages of a novel entitled Lightseed.

Mary Ann Mannino is a lecturer at Temple University.  Her book Revisionary Identities: Strategies of Empowerment in the Writing of Italian American Women published by Peter Lang in 2000 discusses the work of leading writers such as Helen Barolini,  Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Maria Fama.  In 2003, along with Justin Vitiello, she edited a collection of essays by Italian American women writers and critics which explores the ways Italian heritage impacts writing choices for women.  Breaking Open was published by Purdue University Press .  Her poem “Jimmy Fahey” took first prize in the Allen Ginsberg Awards in 2001.  She is both a fiction writer and a poet and her work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies.

Michael Hettich
Books: Flock and Shadow: New and Selected Poems (New Rivers Press, 2005), Swimmer Dreams (Turning Point, 2005), Stationary Wind (March Street Press, 2004), Behind Our Memories (Adastra Press, 2003), Singing With My Father (March Street Press, 2002), Sleeping With the Lights On (Pudding House Publications, 2000), The Point of Touching (LeBow, 2000), Many Simple Things (March Street Press, 1997), Immaculate Bright Rooms (March Street Press, 1994), A Small Boat (University of Florida Press, 1990).
Journals: Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, Poetry East, Rhino Magazine, Smartish Pace, St. Ann's Review, TriQuarterly

Elena Fattakova is a poet/artist, residing in NYC. She writes both in Russian and English.
Her poetry has been published in Poets West Literary Journal, In Our Own Words:
A Generation Defining Itself, Liberty Magazine, California Quarterly: PL&LR,
russian journal the Coast, and others.
A long poem ‘Resurrection’ has been translated to Russian and staged in NYC.
Parts of her most recent poem ‘Alcatraz’ has been published in Poetry Letter & Literary Review: California State Poetry Society, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine in 2006-07.
‘Alcatraz’ is being produced on stage as a full-length multimedia play.
Will premier in NYC theatre in April 2007.
She also works in Collage:  a multi-dimensional medium.
http://strabismus.synnegoria.com   (no www.)

Elaine Starkman lives in the east bay of No. CA. She has always written both prose & poetry. Her work appears in eclectic publications and on line. She currently teaches experimental writing, memoir writing, and Judaica all in the  east bay. For info, write he at Elaine.Starkman@gmail.com.

Marianne Taylor is a Professor of English at Kirkwood Community College where she teaches literature and creative writing. She has been the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award and the Helen A. Quade Memorial Writer's Award; and her manuscript, Salt Water, Iowa, has been a finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, the Richard Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize, and the Winnow Press Open Book Award. Her work has been published widely in national journals such as Nimrod International Journal, North America Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Connecticut Review and Rosebud. She lives in the small town of Mount Vernon, IA, with her husband and four sons.

Barry Ballard’s poetry has most recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, The
Connecticut Review, Margie, and Puerto del Sol. His most recent collection
is A Body Speaks Through Fence Lines (Pudding House, 2006) He writes from
Burleson, Texas. (abballard@hotmail.com)

Michael Onofrey grew up in Los Angeles, but now lives in Japan, where he teaches English as a Second Language. His fiction has appeared in Alimentum, Cold-Drill, Oyez Review, and The William and Mary Review, as well as in other literary journals and magazines in the United States and Japan.

Joanne Lowery was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and educated at the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Birmingham Poetry Review, 5 AM, Passages North, Atlanta Review,Poetry East, Poet Lore, Parting Gifts, Spoon River Poetry Review, and River Styx. Her most recent collections are Seven Misters from Pygmy Forest Press and two chapbooks (Poems that Work and Sweat) from Snark Publishing. She lives in Michigan.

Mireya Robles
Born in Guantánamo, Cuba. Published novels: Hagiografía de Narcisa la bella, Ediciones del Norte, Hanover, N.H., 1985 y Editorial Letras Cubanas, La Habana, Cuba, 2002; Hagiography of Narcisa the Beautiful, Readers International, London, 1996, translated by Anna Diegel; La muerte definitiva de Pedro el Largo, Lectorum, S.A. de C.V, Mexico, D.F., 1998; Una mujer y otras cuatro, Editorial Plaza Mayor, Inc., San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2004. Books of poems: Tiempo artesano, Editorial Campos, Barcelona, 1973; Time, the Artisan, bilingual edition, Dissemination Center for Bilingual, Bicultural Education, Austin, Texas, 1975; En esta aurora, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico, 1976. Has published short stories, poems and articles in literary journals in several countries. Book of Paintings: The Paintings of Mireya Robles/Las pinturas de Mireya Robles, edited by Anna and Olaf Diegel, K&L Publishing, New Zealand, 2006. Has taught in several colleges in the U.S. and was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, for ten years. Presently, she is a Senior Research Associate at that University

Erin McKnight
Born in Scotland and raised in South Africa, Erin McKnight now lives in Virginia. She is an assistant editor for The Rose & Thorn Literary E-Zine, and her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Double Dare Press and Siren: A Literary & Art Journal. Erin holds a degree in English, and is now working on her MFA in fiction.***

B R Strahan
Books: Crocodile Man (The Smith, 1990)
Anthologies: Blood to Remember, American Poets on the Holocaust (Texas Tech University Press, 2006), Who Is Who, Poet's Collection (Struga Poetry Evenings, 2003)
Journals: America, Christian Century, Confrontation, CrossCurrents, First Things, Hollins Critic, Margie, Onthebus, Rattapallax, Seattle Review, Soundings East, Southern California Anthology, Sun Dog

Edward Butscher Born and raised in Flushing, Queens, taught for many years, wrote the first bios of Sylvia Plath (1976),reissued with new afterword by Schaffner Press in 2003, and Conrad Aiken, winner of the PSA's Melville Cane Award in 1988, plus short critical books on Adelaide Crapsey (1979) and Peter Wild (1992).
Poetry collections include Amagansett Cycle (1980) and Child in the House (1994). Also contributed to a number of reference works, among them, MaGill's Survey of Contemporary Poetry and Oxford's Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Good obit fodder.

Dean Kostos is the author of Last Supper of the Senses (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005), which was submitted for a Pulitzer Prize; The Sentence That Ends with a Comma (Painted Leaf, 1999), which was required reading for a course on alternative poetics at Duke University; and the chapbook Celestial Rust (Red Dust, 1994). He co-edited the anthology Mama’s Boy: Gay Men Write About Their Mothers (Painted Leaf, 2000), a Lambda Book Award finalist. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Boulevard, Chelsea, Cimarron Review, Confrontation, The Dirty Goat, Rattapallax, Southwest Review, Western Humanities Review, onOprah Winfrey’s Web site Oxygen.com, and in many other leading journals. He was commissioned to write the text Dialogue: Angel of Peace, Angel of War, set to music by James Bassi, and performed by Voices of Ascension. Box-Triptych, his choreo-poem, was staged at La Mama. He has taught poetry writing at the Gallatin School of NYU, The Columbia Scholastic Press Association, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, The Great Lakes Colleges Association, Pratt University, and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Recipient of a Yaddo fellowship, he has served as literary judge for Columbia University’s Gold Crown and Gold Circle Awards. He holds a double M.A. in creative writing from Antioch University. His undergraduate studies were in art history and painting. His artwork has been shown in galleries and at the Brooklyn Museum. He is currently completing a memoir, a third collection of poems, and has recently edited the anthology Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry, forthcoming in 2007 (Somerset Hall Press).
    
Prasenjit Maiti
(b. 1971) print credits include 2River View, Blue Collar Review, Brittle Star, Brobdingnagian Times, Carillon, Circle, Concrete Wolf, Diner, Famous Reporter, Green Queen, GW Review, Harlequin, Hermes, Homestead Review, Konfluence, Micropress Oz, Monkey Kettle, Nightingale, Nomad, Paper Wasp, Parting Gifts, Peeks & Valleys, Phoenix, Poetic Licence, Poetry Church, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Poetry Greece, Poetry Scotland, Promise, Pulsar, Quercus Review, Rattle, Red Lamp, Reflections, Skald, Skyline, South, Spinnings, The Journal, WinterSPIN and Xtant. His CD-ROM credits include GDS, Heist and Shaken-n-Stirred: Poetry from the Far Corners.

Matthew Kearney has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He has been published widely in such places as Cold Mountain Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, The Hollins Critic, Lynx Eye, The Amherst Review and Plainsongs.

Stephen Dau (b. 1971)is an American writer, journalist and photographer. Originally from Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh) he lives in Brussels, Belgium. His work has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The North Atlantic Review, ELLE Magazine and on MSNBC.com.

June Sylvester Saraceno is English Program Chair at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe and founding editor of the Sierra Nevada College Review. Her work has appeared in various journals including The California Quarterly, Maverick Press, The Pedestal, Poetry Motel, The Rebel, Smartish Pace, Sunspinner, Tar River Poetry and The Village Rambler.
Her chapbook Mean Girl Trips was published fall 2006 by Pudding House
Publications.
Her book Altars of Ordinary Light is forthcoming from Plain View Press in summer 2007.

Carine Topal participated in the grassroots organization California Poets in the Schools. Since 1982, she has anthologized the poetry of special needs children. Her work has appeared in Water-Stone, Caliban, The Best of the Prose Poem, Pacific Review, The Louisville Review, and many other journals. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004, and awarded a residency at Hedgebrook, as well as a fellowship to study in St. Petersburg, Russia, 2005. She is the recipient of several poetry awards including the Robert G. Cohen Prose Poetry Contest, 2007, and the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, “Bed of Want,” is forthcoming from Pessoa Press. Carine conducts on-line mentoring workshops, private workshops, and teaches at the Torrance Cultural Center as well as the VA Hospital in Los Angeles.

Sofia Starnes [The Soul’s Landscape (Aldrich, 2002); A Commerce of Moments (Pavement Saw Press, 2003)] is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Poetry Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Editor's Prize in the Marlboro Poetry Awards, the Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry Prize, Editor's Prize in the Transcontinental Poetry Award, and the Aldrich Poetry Chapbook Award. Her poetry appears in various journals, among them the Notre Dame Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Pleiades, Southern Poetry Review, and Gulf Coast. Her essays and criticism also have been featured in Christianity & the Arts, Christianity & Literature, and ImageUpdate. Her professional homepage can be accessed at  ww.sofiamstarnes.com.

Carmen M. Pursifull was born and raised in New York City in 1930. Her mother was born in Barcelona, Spain, and her father was born in Utuardo, Puerto Rico. He was a mess sergeant in the First World War, and eventually moved to New York with his new bride. Carmen is the youngest of their children and the only sibling alive, except for her sister, who resides in California with her husband and family. She is the Matriarch of the group, as many poets have passed away or disappeared since then.
Carmen has had over 650 poems published internationally, and has to her credit the following published books: 1) Carmen by moonlight, 1982; 2) The Twenty-Four Hour Wake, 1989; 3) Manhattan Memories, 1989; 4) Elsewhere in a Parallel Universe”, 1992; 5) The Many Faces of Passion, 1996; 6) Brimmed Hat With Flowers, (Multi-tasking.com), 2000; 7) World of Wet, 2002, which was written with her poetry partner of five years, Dr. Edward L. Smith, a retired ocean physicist who she mentored in poetry.
Last year Carmen had the pleasure of visiting Iowa and being the guest of William and Christina Rogers for five days, where she held workshops and gave readings. Carmen has also given readings at the WorldWind Project in Verde Gallery in Champaign, Illinois, and at the Douglas Branch library in Urbana, Illinois, where she will again read in April of 2005. Recently Carmen read at Wiley School, where her pen-pal, Morgan, goes to school. In October of 2005, Carmen will do her yearly reading at the Channing-Murray Foundation, on the University of Illinois campus, where the Red Herring Poets Society meets every Monday evening at 7:00 p.m.
Carmen still does local readings, and if all expenses are paid, she will travel out of town to do readings and workshops. For further information, contact Carmen at Llaque3605@aol.com, or the webmaster at tyr_wanjo@hotmail.com.

Fredrick Zydek is the author of eight collections of poetry.  T’Kopechuck: the Buckley Poems is forthcoming from Winthrop Press later this year.  Formerly a member of the faculty in creative writing at UNO and later Lecturer in Theology at the College of Saint Mary, he is now a gentleman farmer when he isn’t writing.  He is the editor for Lone Willow Press.

Tim Bellows is a poet, writer, and teacher ? devoted to wildland and the simplicity of inner travel and Mozart?s notion about ?Love, love, love? as ?the soul of genius." Tim has taught college writing for over sixteen years. He graduated from the Iowa Writers? Workshop and has seen publication of poems in many journals ? and in A Racing Up the Sky (Eclectic Press), Wild Stars (Starry Puddle Press), and Desert Wood (University of Nevada Press).

Yala Korwin is the author of To Tell the Story - Poems of the Holocaust. Many of her poems found their way into scholastic handbooks and anthologies. She had poems published in magazines such as Midstream, Blue Unicorn, NEOVICTORIAN/Cochlea, The Hypertexts, Móbius, and others. She is also a visual artist who works hard to reconcile two competing needs: to express herself with words and with images.

Lisa Sornberger
Anthologies: Take Two - They're Small (Outrider Press, 2002)
Journals: Common Ground Review, Embers, Fairfield Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, New Virginia Review, New York Quarterly

Lyn Lifshin
Just out from Lyn Lifshin: THE LICORICE DAUGHTER: MYYEAR WITH RUFFIAN, Texas Review Press. Also just out: ANOTHER WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE ME from Black Sparrow at Godine.. She has over 120 books & edited 4 anthologies. Her website: www.lynlifshin.com.  Her last two Black Sparrow books, COLD COMFORT and BEFORE IT’S LIGHT, won Paterson Review Awards. New also: IN MIRRORS,  AN UNFINISHED STORY, THE DAUGHTER I DON’T HAVE, SHE WAS FOUND TREADING WATER. Coming soon: TSUNAMI POEMS and ALL THE POETS(MOSTLY) WHO HAVE TOUCHED ME, LIVING AND DEAD. ALL TRUE, ESPECIALLY THE LIES. She is working on a book about the amazing, beloved Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro.

Joel Lipman is a native of Kenosha and graduate of UW-Madison. He is professor of Art and English at the University of Toledo. Among his beautifully obscure books of poetry are Provocateur [Bloody Twin Press, 1988], Machete Chemistry/Panades Physics, with Yasser Musa [Cubola New Art Foundation, 1994], The Real Ideal [Luna Bisante Prods, 1996], and Subversao Deliberada [International Writers & Artists Association, 2000]. Represented in the anthology Writing To Be Seen [Core, Light & Dust, 2001], his visual poems were exhibited in 2002 and 2003 at the New York Center for the Book and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Long active as a mail artist and a five-time recipient of Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships in Poetry, an on-line portfolio of his work can be found at Light and Dust Poets.

Rupert Haigh was born in England in 1970. He read English at university, before training, and then working, as a lawyer. He escaped to Helsinki in 2000, where he now lives permanently. He is the author of two slightly dry but informative books on legal English, and started writing fiction in 2004. His short stories and articles have appeared in The SiNK, Gold Dust, Outercast  and the Jimston Journal. He is currently working on a novel, Throwing It All Away. When not writing, he scrapes a tenuous living as a legal English trainer, proofreader, and editor.

Andrew Demčak's new book of poetry, Catching Tigers in Red Weather , won the Three Candle Press 2007 Open Book Prize. Its publication is forthcoming from Three Candles Press, and it will be available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com and other fine retailers. He is currently working on his second Master's Degree, an MLIS, at U. C. Berkeley. When he is not hard at work driving the Bookmobile for Oakland Public Library, he can be found attending "GuyWriters" poetry readings at Anthony's house in San Francisco , or eating Tibetan momos with his partner, Peter. Viva Wallace Stevens!

Rosemeny Wahtola Trommer
Poet, writer and organic fruit grower Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer uses poetry to help people re-engage with the world beyond pagers and to-do lists. She was recently appointed Poet Laureate of San Miguel County.
She has authored and edited nine books, including If You Listen winner of the Colorado Independent Press Association poetry award, and her poetry is widely anthologized, including The Geography of Hope: Poets of Colorado’s Western Slope, What Wildness This Is: Women Write About the Southwest, and Improv: An Anthology of Colorado Poets.
Rosemerry teaches public speaking for Mesa State College, directs the Telluride Writers Guild, teaches poetry in schools, teaches with Young Audiences, writes an award-winning linguistics column for the Telluride Daily Planet, writes for magazines including Natural Home and Backpacker, sings with a 7-woman a cappella group, and is mother and step-mother to two-year-old Finn and 24-year-old Shawnee. Whew. In 2007, she and her husband, Eric, bought a 70-acre orchard and now grow organic peaches, pears, cherries, nectarines, apples and apricots. Her master’s degree in English Language & Linguistics is from University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Eric Bonholtzer is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in numerous publications, and his short story collection, The Skeleton’s Closet, is now available at Amazon.com and Bn.com (Barnes and Noble). A recent recipient of first place prizes in both the short story and poetry categories of the College Language Association (CLA) Creative Writing Contest/Margaret Walker Prizes for Creative Writing, Eric is also the 2006 Ted Pugh Poetry Award winner. He resides in the Los Angeles area. For more information visit www.ericbonholtzer.com

Bobbi Dykema Katsanis was born in North Dakota by a pair of artists and farmers: her mother a textile artist and her father a storyteller. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including Rock & Sling, Ruah, Grandmother Earth, and The Chaffin Journal. Her first chapbook, The Magdalene’s Notebook, was released in September 2006 from Finishing Line Press. She is currently at work on a doctorate in Art and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, and lives in Berkeley husband, Jason.

Linda Benninghoff is published in over 50 magazines and anthologies. She translated The Seafarer from Anglo-Saxon; the translation appears at http://www.electrato.com/. She has published two chapbooks of poetry, The Street Where I Was a Child and Departures. She won last year's Poetry Super Highway contest and was a finalist this year.
Linda Benninghioff has a MA in English with an emphasis on creative writing from SUNY at Stony Brook.

Srinjay Chakravarti is a 34-year-old journalist, economist and poet based in Salt Lake City, Calcutta,
India. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications in over 25 countries. In North America, his poetry has appeared in Euphony, The Melic Review, Eclectica Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, The Bathyspheric Review, The Avatar Review, Ygdrasil, Science Creative  Quarterly and elsewhere. His first book of poems Occam's Razor (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) received the SALT literary award from John Kinsella and an Australian literary trust in 1995.

Doug Ramspeck directs the Writing Center and teaches creative writing and composition at The Ohio State University at Lima. More than 200 of his poems have been accepted for publication at journals that include West Branch, Confrontation Magazine, Connecticut Review, Rosebud, Roanoke Review, Seneca Review, Rattle, Hunger Mountain, Rhino, and Nimrod. He lives in Lima with his wife, Beth, and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Lee.

Summer Brenner was raised in Georgia and migrated west, first to New Mexico and eventually to northern California where she has been a long-time resident. She has published nine books of poetry and fiction and given scores of readings in the United States, France, and Japan. Her books include The Missing Lover: 3 Novellas (Spuyten Duyvil), Dancers and the Dance (Coffee House Press), and IVY: Tale of a Homeless Girl in San Francisco (Creative Arts). She performs with the poetry-music group, ARUNDO, whose CD Because the Spirit Moved is available from Emergency Records

Christine Lê’s short stories and poems have been accepted by the journals Rain Bird, The Autism Perspective and The Tipton Poetry Journal. Her completed manuscript Vietnam Moon obtained a grant from the Ludwig Vugelstein Foundation, and is currently under review with an outside reader for a midsize press. She lives in Hawaii, and works as a psychologist with children and their families.

Larissa Shmailo has recently been published in and/ or heard on About: Poetry, The Facebook Review, Babel, Big Bridge, Fulcrum, CLWN WR, Naropa’s We (Creative Cannabilism), i-Outlaw, Nefarious Bovine Radio, Wordsalad, and many other media. (please see www.myspace.com/thenonetworld for a complete listing). Her poetry CD, The No-Net World, has been heard on radio and Internet stations around the world. Larissa translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun which was performed at theaters and museums internationally; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. She is a director of TWiN Poetry, an informal collective of 7,000 audio poets, and a translator for the international poetry organization UniVerse. This year, she contributed translations to the anthology New Russian Poetry published by Dalkey Archive Press. She is pleased to join the masthead this year of the acclaimed annual Fulcrum as public coordinator.

Susan Terris
Books: Poetic License (Adastra Press, 2004), Natural Defenses (Marsh Hawk Press, 2004), Fire Is Favorable to the Dreamer (Arctos Press, 2003), Angels of Bataan (Pudding House Publications, 1999), Eye of the Holocaust (Arctos Press, 1999), Curved Space (La Jolla Poets Press, 1998), Nell's Quilt (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996), Killing in the Comfort Zone (Pudding House Publications, 1995), Author! Author! (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990)
Anthologies: In A Fine Frenzy (University of Iowa Press, 2005), Dorothy Parker's Elbow (Warner Books, 2002), Heart to Heart (Abrams, 2001)
Journals: Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Runes: A Review of Poetry, Shenandoah

Patricia Connolly was born in London, she has lived in New York City for  many years. Her poems have been published in such magazines as First  Intensity, Babel (Germany), American Writing 22, Salthill, Raintown Review,  Denver Quarterly, International Poetry Review, 13th Moon, Poetry Now,
Archipelago.org e-mail: jocpatcon@hotmail.com

Mike Maggio has published fiction, poetry, travel and reviews in Potomac Review, Pleiades, Apalachee Quarterly, The L.A. Weekly, The Washington CityPaper, VOL. NO MAGAZINE, Gypsy, Pig Iron, DC Poets Against the War, of which he is an active member,and many others. He is the author of Your Secret is Safe With Me (Black Bear Publications, 1988), an audio collection of poetry, Oranges From Palestine (Mardi Gras Press, 1996), a chapbook of poetry, and, most recently, Sifting Through the Madness(Xlibris, 2001), a collection of short fiction. His work has been met with critical acclaim, with the Midwest Book Review recommending his short story collection as “a grippingly written, sometimes frightening, but always deeply involving anthology.” He is currently working on a new collection of concrete, visual and collage poetry entitled “Once Upon a Blank Page.” He lives in northern Virginia with his wife and three children.

Jennifer Pruden Colligan
Anthologies: Totally Herotica (Plume, 1995), Herotica (Down There Press, 1989)
Journals: Arsenic Lobster, Blue Collar Review, Chronogram, English Journal, Ginosko Literary Journal, Innisfree, Lily Lit Review, Monkey's Fist, Mount Zion Speculative Fiction Review, Pemmican Press, Red Owl, Spoon River Poetry Review

Jayne Lyn Stahl is a widely published poet whose work has appeared in such notable little magazines, and anthologies as Exquisite Corpse, The New York Quarterly, Pulpsmith, The Jacaranda Review, Poetry Magazine, Beatitude: 33, City Lights Review, among other. Her essays appear regularly online at The Huffington Post, Op-Ed News, and The Atlantic Free Press. Her plays have had staged readings in New York and Los Angeles. Ms. Stahl is a full member of PEN USA, and a proud member of PEN American Center in New York."

Sara Toruno received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside in 2006. She is now teaching English at San Jose City College, and resides in San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in Temenos, Perigee, and Monday Night Magazine.

Jefferson Navicky lives in Portland, Maine where he runs the Vermillion Reading & Performance Series. His chapbook, Map of the Second Person, is available from Black Lodge Press. His work can be found in panamowa, Pindeldeboz, Chain, POM2 and others. He is currently drinkiing Hsui Shien Oolong, but doesn't know how to pronounce it.

Kate LaDew was born in the backwoods of Louisiana clutching a nutria by the tail. Elmonte was to be her only friend. Upon moving to Carolina del Norte, Kate and Elmonte, prompted by a conversation with a hitchhiker known only as ‘The Reverend’, founded the two member group The Organization for Respectification. Their main goals are asking questions, wandering off for a bit and taking names when they feel like it. Though few names have been collected, Kate and Elmonte continue to spread the message of respectifying. The pair currently live over an abandoned Food Lion, receiving money for favors.

elena minor’s poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in City Works, Diner, Writers At Work, Passager, Poetry Midwest, 26, Vox, Segue, Prism Review, BorderSenses, The Big Ugly Review, Quercus Review, edifice WRECKED, Banyan Review and Facets.  She is the founding editor of Palabra A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art anda past first prize recipient of the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (drama).

Martin Steele was born and raised