Elmaz Abinader is an Arab American author, playwright and poet and the winner of the 2002 Goldies Award for Literature. Her poetry collection In the Country of My Dreams... won the 2000 Josephine Miles/ Pen Oakland Award. Her memoir Children of the Roojme chronicles the lives of 3 generations of Lebanese immigrants.. With the Country of Origin Band, Elmaz has presented her plays to audiences throughout the Middle East, Central America, Europe and the United States. The play, Country of Origin won two Drammies, (Oregon Drama Critics Awards).She is a co-founder and faculty member of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA) which hold summer writing workshops for writers-of-color. She teaches at Mills College and lives in Oakland. www.elmazabinader.com
Steve Almond is the author of My Life In Heavy Metal, Candyfreak, and The Evil B.B. Chow. Winner of two Pushcart Prizes and widely anthologized, Almond is also a regular music critic for the L.A. Times and the Boston Globe.
Charlie Anders is a half-woman, half-trilobite monster. She's the author of Choir Boy and the co-editor of She's Such A Geek: Women Talk About Science, Technology & Other Nerdy Stuff. She publishes other magazine and organizes the Writers With Drinks reading series.
Peter Anderson's stories have appeared in Storyglossia, THE2NDHAND, The Angler, Dogmatika and other fine venues, and he also has three novels-in-progress which he fully intends to finish someday. A financial analyst by trade, he writes fiction to ease the crushing monotony of corporate life. He lives in Joliet, Illinois, with his wife Julie, daughter Madeleine, and two literature-averse cats.
Arlene Ang lives in Spinea, Italy. She serves as a poetry editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. Her chapbook, "Secret Love Poems" is currently available from Rubicon Press. More of her writing may be viewed at www.leafscape.org.
Joe Balaz lives in northeast Ohio. He is the author of Domino Buzz, a cd of music-poetry. He is also coauthor of JOMA—online, an online gallery of concrete poetry and photography with photo-artist Mary Ellen Derwis. His recent work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Icon, Oregon Literary Review, AdmitTwo, Eleventh Transmission, Right Hand Pointing, The Cerebral Catalyst, Clockwise Cat, Zygote in my Coffee, Neon Literary Magazine, Otoliths, Subtle Tea and The Pittsburgh Quarterly. www.joebalaz.com
Jon Ballard is a poet as well as an occasional literature and writing instructor at Oakland Community College in Royal Oak, Michigan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Boxcar Poetry Review, Rock Salt Plum Review, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Centrifugal Eye, and Blue Earth Review, among others. His first chapbook, Lonesome, is
forthcoming in 2007 from Pudding House Publications. Originally from Michigan, he currently lives in Mexico City, Mexico.
Rosemary Banks is a 2004 graduate of Rutgers-Camden Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program. During her studies with author Lisa Zeidner at Rutgers she discovered an ability and passion for creative writing. In 2005 she was chosen from an international group of applicants to study with author, professor and MacArthur award recipient, Sapphire, at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. In 2006 she attended the Natalie Goldberg writer's workshop in Taos, New Mexico. She began the Rosemont College Creative Writing MFA program in spring of 2006 and will complete in May 2007. After graduation she plans to teach aspects of the novel and writing. Her intent is to create a “room of [her] own” to dedicate her life's work to writing fiction. Rosemary is the single parent of 13-year-old twins and lives in Clementon, New Jersey. She is originally from Portland, Oregon where she earned a BS in Arts and Letters and a Certificate in Black Studies at Portland State University. She is currently completing her Master's thesis, a novel titled, A Polka Dot Tragedy into the Exceeding Brightness. “Being Zarathustra” is her first published work after three years of submissions.
Jessica Baron is currently teaching composition and poetry in Fort Collins, Colorado. She will receive her MFA in poetry in May of 2009 from Colorado State University. She has a publication forthcoming in "Matter." In a previous life, Jessica was a professional actor, living and performing in New York City, and eventually found an artistic home at the Creede Repertory Theatre in Colorado. She is currently working on a poetry manuscript which uses the text, An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski, as a source text.
Jan Baross' writing has been a diversified endeavor. She has authored several screenplays, some of which she later produced and directed. Her film reviews and articles have appeared in several publications in the US and in Mexico. She has served on the board of the Literary Arts Council, and wrote an opera libretto entitled Mata Hari, that debuted in Dallas, Texas. José Builds A Woman, Jan’s first novel, has already won the Kay Snow Award for First in Fiction 2003. Her earliest artistic expression came in the form of painting. Her travels to Mexico have influenced much of her art, down to the medium itself. She incorporates indigenous materials into her art, like the cochineal dye made from cactus insects. Jan's career in filmmaking began in 1976 and now has over 40 documentary and animated films to her credit. Many of her films have won awards at several competitions including: The International Film and Video Festival, The Canadian International, The American Film Festival and The Athens Film Festival. Her films, Oregon Jews and Pioneer Women, aired on Oregon Public Broadcasting and the A&E channel respectively. Jan has made the Pacific Northwest her home for over 30 years. She is currently at work on a new novel, and a series of travel sketchbooks filled with commentary on her adventures in Asia, Africa, Europe and Afghanistan.
Jennifer Bartlett was a 2005 NYFA Fellow. Her first book of poetry is Derivative of the Moving Image (UNM Press, 2007). She lives in Brooklyn, NY with the writer Jim Stewart and their son, Jeffrey.
Gary Beck's recent fiction has appeared in 3AM Magazine, EWG Presents, Nuvein Magazine, Babel, Vincent Brothers Review, L'Intrigue Magazine, The Journal, Short Stories Bimonthly and Bibliophilos. His poetry has appeared in dozens of literary magazines. His plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes, and Sophocles have been produced Off-Broadway. He is also a writer/director of several video documentaries.
F.J. Bergmann's work has appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Cannibal, Malleable Jangle (AU), Margie, and Unpleasant Event Schedule. Her chapbook Aqua Regia was just released by
Parallel Press.
Mike Blake is a writer working in Rhode Island with a novel in progress, but always finding the time for shorter stuff and poems. His writing appears online in 3711 Atlantic; Stick Your Neck Out, Fiction on theWeb, Madswirl, Hackwriters, Zygote In My Coffee, Cerebral Catalyst and Exposed.
CL Bledsoe is an editor for Ghoti Magazine. He has work in over 150 journals including Margie, Nimrod, The Cimarron Review, 42 Opus, and Eyeshot.
Davin Brainard is the co-founder of Time Stereo art collective. Some of Time Stereo's projects include films, coloring books, and cassette-only releases from bands like Princess Dragon Mom, the Crash, Godzuki, New Grape and Noise Camp.
Randolph Bridgeman grew up in the Pacific Northwest and settled in Southern Maryland after a 26 year Navy career. He graduated from St. Mary's College of Maryland with a BA in English and is the recipient of the Edward T. Lewis Poetry Prize (2004), for the most promising emerging poet. He is widely published in poetry reviews and anthologies and is the author of two collections of poems, South of Everywhere and When Left to My Own Devices, both
published by Shadow Poetry Inc.
Jais Brohinsky has lost most perspective and all reference, and is too unsure about his occupation, education, or interests to affirm them as part of an identity. He is a magician, piano technician, animal trainer, student, writer, inventor of games, inlcuding a new "four player" chess modification, and aspiring Chancellor of the World Domination Society (Olympia Chapter).
Mary June Brown lives in California, at the northern tip of the Golden Gate Bridge. She and her husband are busy raising two small, incredibly energetic boys. When she’s not chasing after her kids, she’s writing. She is a member of ‘B’ Street Writers in Marin County. Her short stories have recently been published in Static Movement, and her writing can be found at maryjunebrown.wordpress.com.
Tom Carey was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, with time off for good behavior in Philadelphia, and currently resides in Ann Arbor. Tom has exhibited his drawings, paintings and prints extensively in solo and group shows in the above mentioned cities. His work has also been on view in the Flat Files collection of Pierogi 2000 Gallery in Brooklyn, and a handmade book of linocuts in the Print Collection of the New York Public Library. Tom's imagery comes out of comparitive mythology filtered through the lens of vernacular American culture. The wet and wild aesthetic quality of his angels and demons are meant to jolt the populace out of comatosis into collective dreaming. To learn more please visit www.rustynailstudio.blogspot.com.
Patrick Carrington teaches creative writing in New Jersey, and is the poetry editor at Mannequin Envy (www.mannequinenvy.com). His manuscript Thirst (Codhill, 2007), winner of Codhill Press’ 2006 Poetry Chapbook Award, was released earlier this year (www.codhill.com). His poetry has appeared recently in The Connecticut Review, The Potomac Review, Rattle, The Evansville Review, The New York Quarterly, Hunger Mountain , and other journals. His first collection, Rise, Fall and Acceptance (MSR Publishing, 2006), is available at Main Street Rag’s online bookstore (www.mainstreetrag.com).
Jared Carter is from Indiana. He has published three books of poems. A fourth, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, was recently issued by Wind Publications in Kentucky. The book consists of a series of narrative poems dealing with incidents in American history from the Revolution to the present. His poems have also recently appeared in Pemmican. Carter’s most recent reading was at Wright State University in Dayton in October of 2006. In April of 2007 he will assume a week’s residence on the campus of Cleveland State University. He will be joined for readings and talks by Barbara Presnell, of Lexington, North Carolina, whose first book of poems, Mill, was chosen by Carter as the winner of the 2006 First Book Competition administered by the Poetry Center at Cleveland State. For more information please visit Jared Carter's web site at http://www.jaredcarter.com.
Janet Cannon was born in the Boston area but she has lived in NYC, San Francisco, Taos, and now she lives in the Seattle area. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa where she studied psychology as an undergrad and fine art as a graduate student. Her poems have been published in many literary magazines such as Helicon Nine, G.W. Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Beatitude, New Mexico Humanities Review, and New York Quarterly, among others. She has two published chapbooks (percipience and the last night in new york), and she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. As a single mom Janet has paid the rent by working as a teacher, electrician's assistant, corporate manager, poetry radio host, waitress, editor, and technical writer. Her Web site is: http://www.IsleWrite.com
Yu-Han Chao was born and grew up in Taipei, Taiwan. She received her MFA from Penn State University and currently lives in northern California. Her poetry collection, We Grow Old, is forthcoming with The Backwaters Press, while her short story collection, Passport Baby, is forthcoming with Rockway Press.
Kim Clark most often writes from the heart of the Sunshine Coast. Disease and desire, mothering, and the mundane propel her ongoing journey between poetry and prose. Kim's work can be found in The Malahat Review, Portal, Ascent Aspirations, Artistry, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), and upcoming in Chronically Canadian (Fall 2007). Kim has been a winner in six Capilano College, Cecilia Lamont, and Sechelt Library contests.
Lisa K. Clark is a freelance writer who lives in Bulgaria with her husband. Her son, a Marine Reserve corporal, has served two terms inIraq so far. His observations were invaluable in writing this story. Clark's other publications include both articles and short stories.
Andrew Coburn is the author of 12 novels, 3 of them made into French movies. His work has been translated into 13 languages.
Andrew Csank, poet, is a recent graduate of The Evergreen State College. His work has appeared in Slightly West.
Peter Cunniffe is a husband, father, and business person living in the Philadelphia, PA region. In his spare time, he reads and writes short fiction. He has recently been published in Philadelphia Stories.
Ellen Dannin is a Professor of Law at Penn State University. Before entering teaching, she was a trial attorney with the National Labor Relations Board in Detroit, Michigan. Her most recent book is the acclaimed Taking Back the Workers’ Law – How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights (Cornell University Press 2006).
Lightsey Darst lives in Minneapolis, where she writes on dance, curates mnartists.org’s “What Light” poetry contest, and teaches English and humanities. In 2007 she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Publications include The Antioch Review, The Literary Review, Gulf Coast, and New Letters.
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, and 35 chapbooks. devin.davis@cdva.ca.gov
Steve De France is a widely published poet, playwright and essayist both in America and in Great Britain. His work has appeared in literary publications in America, England, Canada, France, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, India, Australia, and New Zealand. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry in both 2002 and 2003. A few recent publications include The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Mid-American Poetry Review, Ambit, Atlantic, and The Sun. In England he won a Reader's Award in Orbis Magazine for his poem "Hawks." In the United States he won the Josh Samuels' Annual Poetry Competition (2003) for his poem: "The Man Who Loved Mermaids." His play THE KILLER had it’s world premier at the GARAGE THEATRE in Long Beach, California (Sept-October 2006). He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Chapman University for his writing. Most recently his poem “Gregor’s Wings” has been nominated for The Best of The Net by Poetic Diversity.
Mary Ellen Derwis lives in northeast Ohio. She is coauthor of JOMA—online, an online gallery of concrete poetry and photography with Joe Balaz. Her photography has appeared in or is forthcoming from Oregon Literary Review, AdmitTwo, Eleventh Transmission, Otoliths, Subtle Tea and Neon Literary Magazine. What interests her in the field of photo-art is the unpredictable and synergistic nature of photography in general. Capturing an image that can be enhanced in different ways to bring about a visual dialogue between viewer and photograph is what drives her work.
Caitlin Doyle works in London as a children’s book editor, as well as the curious jobs of translating American to English and back again. She has written and collected stories for as long as she can remember, but so far, they’ve been allowed to frolic in open spaces only as far as a handful of readers. Caitlin’s stories were recently etched to life in a glass artwork exhibition, Tales from the Glass Forest. Stories that Ate Children, a collection of short stories illustrated by her sister, will be published in 2006.
Jamie Easter is an illustrator, a sculptor, a painter, an animator, and a chief member of Detroit's freakey performance group ODD CLOUDS.
Xujun Eberlein's writing has appeared in AGNI, Walrus, PRISM International, Stand (UK), StoryQuarterly, Meridian, Post Road and other magazines. She grew up in China, and lives with her husband and daughter in Massachusetts.
Stephen David Engel may be likened to a spry teddy bear lacking tact, or an overgrown cherub whose downy tufts suggest unearthly origins. He attends The Evergreen State College, where he enjoys a public liberal arts education.
A former engineer, John Evans holds undergraduate degrees from Miami University and the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as a MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. "The Novelty of Sinking Low" is taken from his as-yet-unpublished collection, The Art of Falling Down. He lives in Dagu, South Korea, where he is a Visiting Professor of English at Kyungpook National University.
Pat Falk, an award winning poet, teaches writing, literature and women’s studies at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. She was educated at the City University of New York, and publishes poetry, memoir, essays and reviews. Her research is focused on feminist poetics, interdisciplinary approaches to writing, the confluence of poetry and politics, and human rights. She’s listed in Poets & Writers Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, NCC's Speaker's Bureau,and is a frequent reader and workshop leader in the New York tri-state area. Visit Pat Falk at www.patfalk.net.
Born in 1947 and unable to believe the numbers, Dion Farquhar is an ex-New Yorker living in Santa Cruz with the love of her life and their twin teenage sons. A poet and prose fiction writer, as well as college lecturer, writing tutor, and editor, her poems appear in Epiphany, Otoliths, Poems Niederngasse, languageandculture.net, Perigee, AUGHT, Xcp: Streetnotes, Rogue Scholars, City Works, boundary 2, Hawaii Review and Painted Bride Quarterly. Her poetry chapbook, Cleaving, won first prize in the 2007 Poet’s Corner Press contest and is available from dnfarquhar at yahoo dot com.
Jesse Patrick Ferguson was born in Cornwall, Ontario, and he’s the author of 5 poetry chapbooks. He has contributed to Canadian publications such as: Grain, echolocation, The Dalhousie Review, dANDelion, The Antigonish Review, and The New Quarterly. He is a poetry editor for the Fredericton-based journal The Fiddlehead, and he is a celtic ballad collector, playing several musical instruments. If you stacked all of his poetry books on top of each other, you'd likely have a big mess.
Andrea Fitzpatrick is. Her work has appeared (or will soon appear) in Hobart, elimae and Treganza Anthropology Museum Papers.
Skip Fox has published two books (Ahadada and Potes & Poets) and four chapbooks of poetry, and has published poetry in little magazines and literary reviews heavily for over twenty years. After working in warehouses, factories, plants, and mental institutions for years, suporting his life as a poet, as well as a family, he graduated from Bowling Green State Univbersity and now teaches in the English Department of The University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and lives in a log cabin in the country.
Patrick Gallagher is a PhD candidate in Comparative Liteature at New York University. His fiction and editorial work has appeared in numerous journals, most recently Mr. Beller's Neighborhood.
Originally from Massachusetts, Keith Gamache came to New York City while studying art at NYU. Upon graduation he began teaching art at South Side High School in Rockville Centre, NY. He received his MFA from Johnson Sate College/Vermont Studio Center in VT in 1999. He has been working in his Long Island City studio since and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Michelle and two-year old son, Everett. His work has been exhibited in group and solo shows in NYC and Long Island and has been reviewed in the NY Times by critics Phyllis Braff and Helen Harrison.
Ricky Garni is a writer, piano player and graphic designer living in Carrboro, North Carolina. His most recent publications include TAJ MAHAL REVIEW, IOTA, KULTURE VULTURE, DMQ REVIEW , UNPLEASANT EVENT SCHEDULE, and OPIUM MAGAZINE.
Jamey Genna teaches writing in California and is a graduate from the masters in writing program at the University of San Francisco. Her short fiction has been published in many literary magazines including Storyglossia, Cutthroat, Dislocate, Shade, Pinyon and many others. Her collection of short-short fiction I’ll Tell You That Story in a Minute was a finalist for the 2007 Elixir Press Chapbook Awards.
Robert Gibbons received a John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund grant to travel to the University of Stirling in Scotland in order to read his work at their Poetry & Politics Conference. He has published three full-length books of prose poems, reviews of which have appeared in the Evergreen Review and Cercles from France. A recent chapbook, Beyond Time was published online out of Dublin. His prose poems have appeared in The Literary Review, Mississippi Review, and are forthcoming from Jacket.
Steven Gillis is the author of the novels Walter Falls (2003) and The Weight of Nothing (2005), both finalists for the Independent Publishers Book of the Year and ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year. Steve's third novel, Temporary People, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in 2008. Steve's stories, articles and book reviews have appeared in over three dozen journals. A 6 time Pushcart nominee and 4 time Best Of... Notable Stories, a collection of Steve's stories - titled Giraffes -was published in February, 2007. A member of the Ann Arbor Book Festival Board of Directors, and a finalist for the 2007 Ann Arbor News Citizen of the Year, Steve teaches writing at Eastern Michigan University and is the founder of 826 Michigan - www.826michigan.org - and the co-founder of Dzanc Books -www.dzancbooks.org- in partnership with Dan Wickett. All proceeds from Steve's writing goes to his nonprofit programs. steve@dzancbooks.org
Shahar Gold writes and studies philosophy. His writing centres on issues such as derangement. He also makes collages.
Ann Gonzalez is due to earn her MFA from the Whidbey Writers Workshop. The first MFA degree offered by a collective of writers outside of a university. She has previously published works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in VerbSap, In The Family, Aikido Today, Her Circle Ezine, Women Writers and Lunch Hour Stories. This past year, NANOWRIMO prompted her to complete Shh, Shh, Shh, her first novel. It, also, reflects on the pain of schizophrenia for the schizophrenic and her family.
Claudia Grinnell was born and raised in Germany. She now makes her home in Louisiana, where she teaches at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Her poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Exquisite Corpse, Cream City Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, Review Americana, Triplopia, Logos, Minnesota Review, Diner, Urban Spaghetti, Fine Madness, Greensboro Review and others. Her first full-length book of poetry, Conditions Horizontal, was published by Missing Consonant Press in the fall of 2001. Ms. Grinnell was the
recipient of the 2000 Southern Women Writers Emerging Poets Award. In 2003, she was a finalist in the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize Competition. In 2005, she received the Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in poetry and was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2006.
Rainer Gross has exhibited his paintings and works on paper in museums and galleries throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as France, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Denmark. He has had numerous solo exhibits and museum shows.
“…..This New York based artist makes sensuous abstract paintings by a process of his own invention that involves fusing two paintings face to face and the pulling them apart. Exhibited singly or as diptychs, the paintings look like flaking wall sections. They have lush, supersaturated colors and dry, crusty surfaces that look like velvet from a distance.” (Ken Johnson in the New York Times, May 2nd 2003). His website: www.rainergross.com
Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn New York. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum & The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. His paintings, drawings and collages have been published in many on line and print magazines including Rock Heals, Otoliths, Winamop, Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks, Barfing Frog, The Raving Dove, Foliate Oak, Siren, Prose Toad, Triplopia, Thieves Jargon, Opium, Dirt, The Centrifugal Eye, the DMQ Review, Broadsided, Hotmetalpress, Double Dare Press, Events Quarterly,Unlikely Stories, Coupremine,Cerebration,Chick Flicks, Softblow Eclectica Magazine Backwards City Review,Right Hand Pointing, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Brew City Magazine, Fiction Attic, Blue Print Review, Ellipsis,The Indelible Kitchen, Cricket, Entelechy, So To Speak, Taj Mahal Review, The Fifteen Project, The Externalist, Why Vandalism,Mungbeing Magazine, Lamination Colony, Paradigm, Lily, Literary Fever & Glassfire Magaine. Over the years he has received three National Endowments For The Arts Fellowship, two Pollock-Krasner grants and most recently in 2004 received The Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant. Currently he teaches art at the United Federation of Teachers Retiree Program in Brooklyn
Matthew Hamity is a student in the MFA program at Columbia University. His work has appeared in Our Stories Literary Journal.
Curtis Harnack, born in 1927, son of an Iowa farmer, began his education in a one-room schoolhouse. He is author of three related novels portraying rural Iowa and small-town life at mid-twentieth century: The Work of an Ancient Hand (1960, Harcourt); Love And Be Silent (1962, Harcourt); Limits of the Land (1979, Doubleday). His acclaimed memoir of childhood, We Have All Gone Away (1973, Doubleday) has been continuously in print for three decades. A sequel, The Attic: A Memoir (Iowa State U. Press, 1993) completes the account of his growing-up years. Under My Wings Everything Prospers (1977, Doubleday) consists of six short stories and a novella. Persian Lions, Persian Lambs (1965, Holt) describes a year of teaching in Tabriz, Iran, as a Fulbright professor of American literature. Gentlemen on the Prairie (1985, Iowa State U. Press) relates the history of a colony of wealthy British settlers who attempted to re-create Victorian England on the Midwestern prairie. He taught English at Grinnell, 1952-56; at the Iowa Writers Workshop, 1957-58 and again, 1959-60. With Paul Engle he co-edited the O. Henry Collection, Prize Stories, 1958 and 1959 (Doubleday). For the decade of the 1960s he was on the literature faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, where he co-founded the American Studies program. From 1971-87 he was president of Yaddo, the artists colony in Saratoga Springs, New York; and from 1992-97 he was president of the School of American Ballet, the training academy of the New York City Ballet. He has lived for periods in England, France, and Italy, as well as Iran. Under State Department auspices, in 1979 he toured Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania lecturing on American literature; and on a U.S./China Arts Exchange program in 1986, he traveled to China. A resident of New York City, married to writer Hortense Calisher, he also lives in upstate New York; and he is a frequent visitor to Iowa, where he continues to own part of the family farm.
A member of the Writer’s Center of Indiana, Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center, and one chapbook, The Soul At Work: Poems From The Office. Barry lives in Zionsville, Indiana and works as a systems analyst for Eli Lilly & Company in Indianapolis. His poetry has recently appeared in Lily, Subtle Tea, The Centrifugal Eye, Flutter Poetry Journal , Houston Literary Review and Night Train and is forthcoming in The Hiss Quarterly and Snow Monkey.
Daniel Y. Harris, M.Div, is Adjunct Faculty at Sonoma State University. His poetry chapbook, Unio Mystica(2007), will be published by Cross-Cultural Communications. His recent publication credits include: Zeek, The Pedestal Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, In Posse Review, Mad Hatters’ Review, Sein und Werden, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Magazine.com, Convergence, The Other Voices International Project, and The Denver Quarterly,. The Jewish Community Library of San Francisco, Market Street Gallery, The Euphrat Museum, The Center for Visual Arts and Dolly Fiterman Fine Arts are among his art exhibition credits. His website is www.danielyharris.com
Jenny Hawkins Lecce is a freelance writer and author of several plays including "Flyfishing in Tribeca," "Henry's Day," "Second Cousins," Getting Consent" and "Dinner at the Evergreen." NYC productions include Pace University, Neighborhood Playhouse, Douglas Fairbanks Theater, Westbeth, Brooklyn College: New Works on Film/Public Access, Creative Place Theater and more. She is a member of Charles Maryan's Playwright and Director Laboratory in NYC. Her recent full length play "A Dog's Tale" is scheduled to premiere at the Hole in the Wall Theater in Connecticut in 2007. This Wheelhouse debut marks the first time Jenny's short fiction has been seen beyond a sparsely attended open mic.
Bennett Hart is a law student in Washington state.
Sheyene Foster Heller is an award-winning writer of creative non-fiction and essays. Heller currently lives in Los Angeles and teaches English and creative writing courses online. She is also finishing her first memoir, Natural Disasters. Selections from this book have been published in W.W. Norton’s In Brief, Brevity, Nebraska Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Pennsylvania English, American Cowboy, and elsewhere. Heller recently was a recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award in Nonfiction, and the piece selected (based on a chapter of her memoir) is forthcoming in Tampa Review.
Steve Heller is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Jonis Agee calls Steve Heller "an authentic American voice who teaches us about the human heart, haunted by misdeeds, mysteries, and longing." He is the author of two novels, The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman (winner of the Friends of American Writers First Prize for Fiction) and Father's Mechanical Universe. Heller's short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and national anthologies, and twice have received O. Henry Awards. He has also received an Individual Fellowship Grant in Fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently serves as the Chair of the Creative Writing Department at Antioch University, Los Angeles.
Stephen Dunn says of Tung-Hui Hu, "The Book of Motion is an exciting debut" and Linda Gregerson has remarked of the young poet that, "in an age, too often, of surfeit and stall, these poems chart the feft alignments of silence and sublimity, minimal brush stroke and maximal wit, deadpan ad-lib and the swerve of philosophic penetration." Tung-Hui Hu received his M.F.A from the University of Michigan and his first collection, The Book of Motion, was chosen for the Contemporary Poetry Series by Georgia Press and won the Avery Hopwood Award. He is hard at work on his second collection, Mine, which will be published in 2007. Wheelhouse is proud to give readers a glimpse of this new work, as well as to share a piece from The Book of Motion.
Sarah Ruth Jacobs grew up in Bangor, Maine and currently lives in Queens, New York. Her writing has won awards from Poets & Writers, The Cornell Council for the Arts, and The New York Times. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail and The Mississippi Review.
Eddie Jeffrey used to deliver appliances, and was also once a cemetery groundskeeper, as well as a short order cook. His other stories have appeared at JazzTimes, Dogmatika, Blaze VOX, and most recently at Cautionary Tale. He lives in Baltimore.
Daniel Johnston has spent the last 20 or so years exposing his heartrending tales of unrequited love, cosmic mishaps, and existential torment to an ever-growing international cult audience. Initiates, including a healthy number of discerning musicians and critics, have hailed him as an American original in the style of bluesman Robert Johnson and country legend Hank Williams. In January, 2005, the feature-length documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" premiered at Sundance Film Festival and at film festivals around the world that year. His drawings were exhibited in the Whitney Biennial :: Day for Night 2006 in New York.
Majid Kathiri is a poet and teacher from New York City.
Raud Kennedy is a dog trainer. His poetry chapbook, Glimpses, is available at Lulu.com, and he is currently promoting his new novel, Mad Rabbits. To learn more visit: MadRabbitsTheNovel.com
Donna Kuhn is a poet, author, dancer, visual and video artist living in Northern California.
Rahul Kumar is an associate professor of philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada. Before teaching at Queen's, Kumar was an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. His principal interests are in moral and political philosophy, and he has published on issues in non-consequentialist moral theory. His book, Consensualism In Principle, has recently been released to critical praise by Blackwell Publishers.
Sahra Kuper is an MFA drop out working as a Career Counselor and loving it. Previous publication includes "Monologues for Women By Women" with a monologue about a woman with a sex change who wants to tell us what is actually so great about peeing standing up.
Jane Rosenberg LaForge has published criticism in Paradoxa; fiction in Pebble Lake Review; and poetry in Rain City Review and La Petite Zine. She teaches English in New York City and is the mother of a future killer whale scientist.
Julia LaSalle has had stories published in Mississippi Review, Spirit Magazine, Drunken Boat, and KnitLit Three. KnitLit Three is a collection of short stories published by Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House. She is currently co-editor of Steel City Review. Julia was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Fall 2005 Short Story Contest for New Writers.
Rob Lavender is an MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Swink, Monkeybicycle, Descant, Aura Literary Arts Review, Happy, and Zone 3.
Bethany Tyler Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of North Texas, where she has served as the Production Editor for American Literary Review and Creative Nonfiction Editor for North Texas Review. Her work has appeared in Hayden's Ferry, Puerto del Sol, and Sojourn.
Southern California: land of dislocation and assimilation. It is a place Diane Lefer knows well. In California Transit, she uses conversational prose and macabre wit to zero-in on a Mexican woman detained indefinitely by immigration officials, isolating her from her American family; or a zoo employee considering what to do with a euthanized antelope's head; or, in the title novella, a lonely woman, riding buses all day, who cannot avert the violence building within her. This collection explores the difference between justice and law through a lens unfiltered by moralistic or didactic intention. Like a surveillance camera meant to record crime, not to stop it, Lefer presents a world gone wrong, not because of people's hatred for one another but because of their impossible, unfulfilled yearning to connect. Visit Diane's website here.
Marc Leuthold is an artist and art professor who maintains a studio in Harlem in New York City.
Sarah Mangold is the author of Household Mechanics (New Issues) and the chapbooks Blood Substitutes (Potes & Poets), Boxer Rebellion (g o n g), Picture of the Basket (dusie kollectiv), Parlor (dusie kollectiv) and Cupcake Royale (forthcoming '08). She lives in Seattle where she publishes Bird Dog, a journal of innovative writing and art and co-edits, with Maryrose Larkin, Flash + Card, a chapbook and ephemera press.
Clare L. Martin is a poet-mother-wife living with a diagnosis of bipolar disease since 1992. She is a graduate of University of Southwestern Louisiana. Clare's creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in several literary journals, including Farmhouse Magazine, Blood Lotus, Lily Lit Review and Blue Fifth Review. She is also the playwright of "Waterlines" produced in April and November 2006, and May 2007 as part of the project Sustained Winds, a collaboration of Louisiana artists responding to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Sustained Winds was performed to great critical reviews in New York City in August 2007 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.
Matt Maxwell's fiction can be found at madhattersreview.com, eyeshot.net, flashquake.org, and writesideup.net; his work will also soon appear at thegreenmuse.net and noojournal.com.
John McClellan is a poet/monad/human/father/citizen/artist from Ventura County, CA. He is interested in sentiency, ego, negative and positive exposure, perpetual birth, saints, dictators, sorrow, sex drive, stereotype, mind, mercurial laughs, the buckling of space, family, friends and the great feast the normal stuff of love and emancipation. McClellan was published in Art/Life & Brick publications a few times each in the 90s.
Maureen McHugh is pursuing a degree in English with a minor in Classics. She has previously been published in the literary magazines
Stylus and Stirring and is forthcoming in The Blue Fifth Review as well as The South Carolina Review. She is editor of University of
Maryland's independent literary journal That Far Down, and won the Jiminez-Porter literary prize in 2007.
Kevin McLellan is an MFA graduate of Vermont College, instructor of poetry workshops at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, and Assistant Poetry Editor for 42opus, He has recent or forthcoming poems in journals including: Apple Valley Review, Barrow Street, BLOOM, Eucalyptus, Konundrum Engine Literary Review, three candles and others. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Michelle McMahon is a writer of short stories, experimental fiction, and poems. She completed her MFA in fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in River Walk Journal, Getgo Magazine, SHAMPOO, Hot Whiskey Magazine #2, The Chickasaw Plum,the anthology The Year of the Blue Jay, and on the experimental fiction website Cut ‘n’ Mix. She grew up in three countries, four states, and eight cities and now lives in Los Angeles, California, with seven dogs, two pigs, a chicken, her husband and son (all of them imaginary, except the husband and son).
Corey Mesler's work has appeared in many publications including Turnrow, Adirondack Review, American Poetry Journal, Paumanok Review, Yankee Pot Roast, Monday Night, Elimae, H_NGM_N, The American Drivel Review, Poet Lore, Forklift OH, Euphony, Rattle, Dicey Brown, Cordite and Cellar Door. His novel-in-dialogue, Talk, was published by Livingston Press in 2002. His new novel, We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon, is also from Livingston Press. His poem, “Sweet Annie Divine,” was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, and he has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize. He's been a book reviewer, fiction editor, university press sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son. With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.
Erika Meyers graduated from Kent State University last May with an English degree with a minor in Writing. Her recent publications include The Blue Collar Review and The New Writer.
June Michaels has a blasted good time selling used furniture out her own store in Lakewood, Arizona. When she isn't busy selling old stuff, she's writing memoir, fiction, and poetry. This is her first publication.
Jessica Milby is a Philadelphia artist, originally from Alabama. Her work in print-making and painting has been shown throughout the Northeast. Her etchings have recently been described as both "otherworldly" and "meticulously reminiscent of the19th century Japanese masters-with a subtle touch of post-modernity" by Core Magazine. She also works as an archivist at the Philadelphia Art Museum.
Ben Miller is a writer and teacher from New York City.
Sally Molini's work has appeared in or is forthcoming in LIT, Mad Hatters' Review, Ab Ovo, 32 Poems, Gargoyle, Salt Hill, Segue, Calyx, Stirring, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Warren Wilson College's MFA Program and lives in Nebraska.
Nathan Murphy is a poet and actor living in Olympia, Washington.
Christopher Mulrooney has written poems in Beeswax, Delmarva Review, Guernica and Vanitas.
Alicia Oltuski is an MFA candidate at Columbia University and a manuscript reader at the Paris Review. She also writes a weekly Arts and Culture page for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Her publications include Touchstone Literary Journal, Prairie Margins, The Penn Review, Peregrine, New Voices, and the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
Eliza Tucker Osborn is a freelance writer, essayist and historical novelist. Her nonfiction can be found in City Legacy Magazine, Pittsburgh Parent Magazine, and the anthology, Stories from Beyond the Sidewalk, and she is a contributor to the “Unusual Historicals” blog. Eliza resides in the Midwestern capitol of crime, Youngstown, Ohio, with her husband and daughter. She can be found on the Web at www.elizatucker.com.
Both an internationally shown artist and also experienced geneticist, Hunter O'Reilly reinterprets science as art through abstractions, digital art and installations. She holds a Ph.D. and Master's degree in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of California-Berkeley. She teaches biology and art at Loyola University Chicago. She created a course, Biology Through Art, where students have the opportunity to create innovative artworks in a biology laboratory.
Peter Orner is the author of Esther Stories and The Second Coming of Mauala Shikongo. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories. Born in Chicago, he currently lives in San Fransisco and teaches at San Francisco State University.
Chaz Park was born in South Korea and currently works as a Civil Engineer in Portland, Oregon. His drawings and collages are produced solely in Microsoft Word Paint 2.0. Wheelhouse Magazine is proud to debut Mr. Park's work.
Kathleen Paul-Flanagan is the mother of three wonderful beasts. She's been married to a very nice man for twenty years. She stopped writing for a long time and in 2004, decided to try again. Since then, she's had poems published in Nerve Cowboy, My Favorite Bullet, Zygote in My Coffee and quite a few other places. In 2005, she took over editing "remark." and made it into a print 'zine.
Nate Pritts is the author of two full length poetry collections – Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX) & the forthcoming Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road). The editor of H_NGM_N, an online journal of poetry & poetics, he is also a frequent contributor to Rain Taxi. Originally from New York, he lives in Louisiana with his family and teaches gifted students at Bolton High School in Alexandria, LA.
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both published by Story Line Press. Other of his poems and essays have appeared in Hudson Review, Southern Review, Fulcrum, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), Representations and elsewhere. Poems have most recently appeared in the print journals Iota (UK), Orbis (UK), Naked Punch (UK), and are forthcoming in The Hat and Magma (UK). Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Snorkel, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, Words-Myth, BlazeVox, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, The New Hampshire Review, elimae, and elsewhere, and are forthcoming in nthposition and Mudlark. Pollack is an adjunct professor of creative writing at George Washington University, Washington, DC.
Aside from his internationally shown visual work, Chris Pottinger is a stalwart of the experimental Detroit music scene as a member of the band Odd Clouds. Visit him and the rest of Odd Clouds at www.tastysoil.com.
Glen Pourciau's stories have been published in recent or forthcoming issues of Cimarron Review, Confrontation, Harpur Palate, Mississippi Review, New England Review, and New Orleans Review. One of his stories won Ontario Review's Cooper Fiction Prize and received special mention in the 2007 Pushcart Prize annual.
Liz Prato's fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, ZYZZYVA, Subtropics, the Berkeley Fiction Review, Gertrude Press, and Contrary. She won 1st place in the Berkeley Fiction Review’s 2005 Sudden Fiction contest, and was a winner in the 2006 Oregon Writers Colony contest.
Nahid Rachlin, born in Iran, came to the United States to attend college and stayed. She has been writing and publishing novels and short stories, in English. Among her publications are a memoir, PERSIAN GIRLS (Tarcher/Penguin), four novels, JUMPING OVER FIRE (City Lights), FOREIGNER (W.W. Norton), MARRIED TO A STRANGER (E.P.Dutton), THE HEART'S DESIRE (City Lights), and a collection of short stories, VEILS (City Lights). Her individual short stories have appeared in about fifty magazines, including The Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Redbook and Shenandoah. While a student she held a Doubleday-Columbia fellowship and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship (Stanford). The grants and awards she has received include the Bennet Cerf Award, PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. website: http://www.nahidrachlin.com/
Nanette Rayman Rivera lives in New York City. She has been published in The Berkeley Fiction Review, Dragonfire, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Pedestal, Carousel, Wicked Alice, The Pebble Lake Review, Sein Und Werden, andwerve, Barnwood, The Centrifugal Eye, Words and Pictures, Her Circle, Poesia, Arsenic Lobster, Stirring, Flashquake, A Little Poetry, DMQ Review, Velvet Avalanche Anthology, Verse Libre, Erosha, Three Candles, Snow Monkey, Jack, Flutter,
Small Spiral Notebook, Carve Magazine, 5 Trope, Mindfire Renewed, Wanderings, Concrete Wolf, Rogue’s Scholars, remark, eye-rhyme, Central Avenue, RedRiver Review, Mannequin Envy, and Underground Window, among others. She was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes this year: Arsenic Lobster for poetry and Dragonfire for memoir. Her first poetry collection will be published in March by Foothills Publishing.
Ellen Rittberg is a poet, fiction writer and screenwriter. Her poems have been in Kansas Quarterly, Long Island Quarterly, and Flutter and she was one of the winners of the Border's Bookstore Poetry Contest. Her plays have been performed off off Broadway, in festivals and in Los Angeles. Her essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times and Newsday op ed pages and she was a frequent contributor the Daily News.
Linda Rodriguez is the former Director of the UMKC Women's Center and was a co-convenor of the Women & Environment Caucus at the United Nations international conference, Women 2000: Beijing Plus Five. She is a founder of the University Women’s Leadership Institute and the Missouri Women's Leadership Coalition and serves on a number of community boards. Now, as a writer and personal coach, she works with individual clients and gives workshops in creativity, diversity awareness, leadership, time management, and writing. Linda has a B.A. and an M.A. in English from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She has published poetry and fiction in literary magazines, such as The Kansas City Star, New Letters, Potpourri, and Plainswoman, and a chapbook of poetry, Skin Hunger (Potpourri Publications, 1995).
Shauna Rogan is a San Francisco based writer and performance artist. Her writing has appeared in nearly twenty print and online publications including Exquisite Corpse, In Our Own Words Vol IV, Suspect Thoughts, Mississippi Review, and Comet. She is also the Poetry Editor for Other Magazine, and author of the chapbooks Drinking, Dancing, Kissing, Yelling, The Art of Restraint, and Dabbling in Babylon. Currently in production is a performance ritual exploring the dilution of myth in modern culture called ‘Snow White Lies in Wait.’ She reads
all hate mail and love notes sent to shaunarogan@hotmail.com and would love to hear from
you.
Jim Ruland lives in San Diego and works at an Indian Casino. He is the host of Vermin on the Mount, an irreverent reading series in the heart of L.A.'s Chinatown, and the author of Big Lonesome.
Natasha Saje is a professor of English Literature at Westminster College. She has published two books of poetry, Bend (Tupelo Press, 2004) and Red Under the Skin (winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize). Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Paris Review, The Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Antioch Review, and Ploughshares.
Alfie Casaus Salazar belongs to a poetry group called "Las Compañedas," a Spanish word meaning “The Companions.”His work has been published in Nuestras Raíces, the journal of the Genealogical Society of Hispanic America, and on the website of El Escritorio Publishers.
Arthur Saltzman is the author of ten books, including the essay collections Objects and Empathy, which won the First Series Creative Nonfiction Award from Mid-List Press; Nearer, which came out last spring from Parlor Press; and two collections forthcoming in 2007, Solve for X (U. of South Carolina Press) and The Obligations of the Harp. He is a Professor of English at Missouri Southern State University.
Amy L. Sargent lives outside of Pittsburgh, PA in a tiny, lopsided house with her husband and their four cats. Amy teaches freshman composition courses at a local community college, and her poetry has appeared (or is forthcoming) in The Dalhousie Review, Plain Spoke and juked, among others.
Teresa Schartel is an MFA student at Chatham College in Pittsburgh, PA. Her poems have appeared in Empowerment 4 Women and elimae.
Rebecca Schmidt's life had been, for years, devoted to Columbia University President, Lee. C. Bollinger, the self-appointed leader on affirmative action within white America. Unfortunately, he would not leave his wife. These are the first of her poems, debuting here, at Wheelhouse Magazine. She currently resides in New York and is the mother of two.
David Schulz is a freelance illustrator and artist from Middletown, Connecticut. His work has been exhibited at the Brick Gallery in Essex, Connecticut and is currently on view at the Russell Library. His illustrations have appeared in numerous publications, including the Hartford Courant, and he recently illustrated two books by Connecticut author Gina Greenlee.
Eden Schulz is a union organizer at Local 2110, United Auto Workers, in New York City. She has served as an artistic consultant and editor for numerous unionist publications and public relations campaigns. Over the years she has designed logos, art posters and websites for some of the leading labor organizations, including the UAW and the New York City Central Labor Council. She is also the managing editor of Wheelhouse Magazine.
Jonah Schulz is a freelance artist in Brooklyn, NY. Visit his website at www.jonahschulz.com.
Peter Schwartz is the editor of 'eye' and the associate art editor of Mad Hatters' Review. His
artwork can be seen all over the Internet but specifically at: www.sitrahahra.com. He has almost 200 poems published in such journals as Porcupine, Vox, and Sein und Werden. Currently he is working on paintings for an exhibit at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in Chelsea, New York City.
M. Bartley Seigel teaches literature and creative writing at Michigan Technological University and is editor of Pank: New Writing & Art.
Spencer Selby is the author of eight poetry books, three compilations of visual work and a study of film noir. He coordinated The Canessa Park Reading Series for six years and created The List of Experimental Poetry/Art Magazines in 1993. He lives in Oakland, California.
Tom Sheehan’s Epic Cures, (short stories), from Press 53 won a 2006 IPPY Award from Independent Publishers. A Collection of Friends, (memoirs), 2004 from Pocol Press, was nominated for PEN America Albrend Memoir Award. His fourth poetry book, This Rare Earth & Other Flights, issued by Lit Pot Press, 2003. Print mysteries are Vigilantes East and Death for the Phantom Receiver. An Accountable Death is serialized on 3amMagazine.com. Six novels seek publication. His short story collection, Brief Cases, Short Spans, will be issued in 2008, and The Quickening Source has been completed, as has Silas Tully, Saugus Cop Now and Then. He has nominations for eight Pushcart Prizes and two Million Writers Awards, a Silver Rose Award from ART for short story excellence, and many Internet appearances. He can be reached at tomfsheehan@comcast.net. He is a veteran of the Korean War (31st Infantry Regiment), a Boston College grad after Army service, and has been retired for 16 years.
Sarah J. Sloat grew up in New Jersey, and after university lived in China, Kansas and Italy. For the last 15 years, she’s lived in Germany, where she’s an editor for a news agency. Sarah’s poetry has appeared in Third Coast, RHINO and Juked, among other publications. Her favorite poets include Pier Giorgio di Cicco and Vasko Popa.
Anthony Neil Smith is the author of two novels--PSYCHOSOMATIC and THE DRUMMER (named one of January Magazine's Best of 2006). His work has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Bellevue Literary Review, Natural Bridge, Flyway, Void Magazine, Juked, Murdaland, plus many others. Originally from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, he's currently far far away on the creative writing faculty at Southwest Minnesota State University.
John Sperling has been published in Pearl, Spout, Swinkmag.com, and Smokelong.com. His influences range from John Fante to Judge Judy, and he enjoys avocados, dry heat, and sitting quietly. He is currently finishing his first novel.
Caty Sporleder grew up in Emmett Idaho. After 18 years she traded her big sky for the dense tree cover of Olympia, Washington, and The Evergreen State College. She received her MFA from Antioch University in 2008. Her favorite book is The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy.
Jill Stegman lives on the central coast of California, where she teaches at an alternative high school. Her work has most recently been published, or is forthcoming, in such journals as Del Sol Review, Lynx Eye, North Atlantic Review, Isotope, Storyglossia, and RE:AL. She has recently been named a finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Story Contest for New Writers.
Elizabeth Kate Switaj teaches English at Shengda College in China's Henan Province. Her full-length book, How to Drink a Floral Moon, is forthcoming from Blue Lion Books, while her chapbook, The Broken Sanctuary: Nature Poems, is currently available from Ypolita Press. She edits Crossing Rivers Into Twilight. www.elizabethkateswitaj.net
Ron Tanner has published stories in such magazines as The Iowa Review, the Massachusetts Review, the Literary Review, Story Quarterly, and dozens of others. His work has been anthologized in Best of the West, the Pushcart Prizes, and Twenty Under Thirty: Early Work of America's Influential Writers. Awards for his short fiction include a James Michener Fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, first prize in the New Letters national fiction competition, gold medal in the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society national competition for short fiction, and many others. His first collection of short stories, A Bed of Nails, won the first-annual G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize, sponsored by BkMk Press at he University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Marilyn Taylor’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Scholar, Smartish Pace, The Formalist, Evansville Review, and many other literary journals. Her second full-length collection, titled Subject to Change (David Robert Books), was nominated for the 2005 Poets’ Prize. Marilyn is a Contributing Editor for THE WRITER magazine, where her articles on poetic craft appear regularly. Her chapbook manuscript titled Going Wrong was just accepted by Parallel Press, and is scheduled for publication in 2009.
Andrew Topel doesn't much like writing about himself.
Among Lourdes Vasquez' latest books are: Sin ti no soy yo (Puerto, 2005), La estatuilla (Cultural, 2004), Bestiary: Selected Poems (Bilingual Review Press, 2004), finalist of the Foreword Book of the Year Award 2004; May the Travesties of my island (Belladona, 2004), Salmos del cuerpo ardiente (Chihuahua Arde, 2004), Hablar sobre Julia (SALALM, 2002), and Park Slope (Duration Press, 2003). Her short stories, essays and poetry had been widely published in anthologies, journals and newspapers abroad. She is winner of the International Juan Rulfo Short Story Award, 2002 (France). Her work is translated in English, Swedish, Portuguese, Italian, Galician and Mixtec. She has collaborated with a great group of artists. In all collaborations the process had been participatory and dynamic, nurturing through dialogue, workshops or rehearsals. Among the artists she has worked with are Teo Freytes, Jane Gilday, Maia Sorensen, Andrea Hasselager, Lene Lavtsen, Kim Quiley, Consuelo Gotay, Adál Maldonado and Tere Martínez. Her website: http://www.lourdesvazquez.net/
Kevin Vaughn is a 2006-2007 United States J. William Fulbright Fellow at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where he is the Director of the Translation Project in African American Literature & Culture. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and previously an editor at the magazine PARNASSUS: Poetry in Review. He holds a BA from Vermont College and will soon be awarded his MFA in poetry from Columbia University. His poetry has recently appeared in Mississippi Review.
Paul Vidich writes short stories early in the morning before his family gets up. It's the only time that he has to himself. He is a senior executive in a large media company, and he has taken creative writing courses with Nahid Rachlin at the New School and the 92nd Street Y. Several of his stories have been workshopped on Zoetrope's website. He actively supports the arts and sits on the boards of Poets & Writers and Intar Theater.
William Walsh's stories and derived texts have appeared in New York Tyrant, Juked, Caketrain, Lit, Rosebud, Crescent Review, Quarterly West, Elimae, Fringe, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and other journals. His first novel, Without Wax, will be published in March 2008 with Casperian Books, and an illustrated chapbook entitled "The Snowman on the Moon" is forthcoming with Uptown Books. http://questionstruck.blogspot.com
Eric Weinstein is currently finishing an AB in English and Philosophy at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He was born in Macon, Georgia and grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire. As of June he will be living, working, and writing in New York City. His poetry has previously appeared in The Archive, Duke's literary journal, and has won several awards, including the Anne Flexner Prize in Poetry.
James R. Whitley's poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared or is forthcoming in several publications, including Barrelhouse, elimae, Mississippi Review, Pebble Lake Review, Poetry Southeast, the strange fruit, and Texas Poetry Journal. His first book Immersion won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. His second collection This Is the Red Door won the Ironweed Press Poetry Prize and will be published in 2007.
Elizabeth Williamson is an assistant professor of English Literature at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. She has lectured widely on Reformation Aesthetics and the History of Drama, as well as modern cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare. Her articles on Renaissance politics and religion are forthcoming in Studies in English Literature and The International Shakespeare Yearbook. In addition to her academic pursuits, Elizabeth served as co-chair of GET-UP (Graduate Employees Together, University of Pennsylvania), the union of teachers at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been an advocate of unionism, civil rights, and prison reform in the United States, and continues to pursue these subjects in her teaching at Evergreen.
David Michael Wolach's work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Night Train, Saint Elizabeth Street, The Duplications, Ditch, Poetry Midwest, and Storyglossia. He was awarded an Oakland University Mary K. Davis Award for Short Fiction and a Broadside Press Poets Award. Amitav Ghosh, author of In an Antique Land noted that Wolach "is a writer of remarkable fluency and considerable talent." He teaches philosophy, literature, and poetics at The Evergreen State College.
Michael Wolach teaches English literature in the Bronx at the School for Social Justice. He is also the union representative for his school and has been an amateur photographer ever since he picked up his first camera in 1995.
Ian Wood was born in Lynnwood, Washington, home of the Alderwood Mall, in 1981, the Year of the Rooster. He is a young and upcoming artist just beginning his work in film. He began his artistic endeavors in music, forming Sloppy Sevenths, a rock band (for lack of a better term), whose hiatus remains indefinite. His hands have dabbled in various media, including music, collage, video, photography, writing, and the conglomeration of all of these: film. Tsunami Escape is his first film. He is currently in production on a short film titled River-Oceans. Contact/Feedback: tsunamiescape@hotmail.com
Sandra Yannone’s poetry and reviews have appeared in Ploughshares, CALYX, Prairie Schooner, and The Gay and Lesbian Review. Top, a chapbook, is available from Ultima Obscura Press. Past awards include an AWP Intro Award and the Academy of American Poets University Prize. She currently is a faculty member and Director of the Writing Center at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA.
Joshua Young studies creative writing as a graduate student at Western Washington University. He has two novels There and Have You Heard of Wes Anderson? published by indie press Lines and Blood books and a forthcoming collection of his stories and poetry is due out October. He and his twin brother are both filmmakers working with a community of writers, actors, and filmmakers in Bellingham, Washington.
Maged Zaher was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt and came to the U.S. to pursue a graduate degree in Engineering. His English poems have appeared in magazines such as “Columbia Poetry Review”, “Exquisite Corpse”, “Jacket”, “New American Writing”, “Tinfish”, and others. He performed his poems at Subtext, Kootenay School of Writing, Bumbershoot, St. Mark's Poetry Project, Evergreen State College, and other plaes.