Seth Abramson is the author of The Suburban Ecstasies (Ghost Road Press, forthcoming 2009). Recent poems are also forthcoming in Best New Poets 2008, New American Writing, Salmagundi, New York Quarterly,
Pleiades, Subtropics, and elsewhere. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a former public defender, Seth currently attends the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Joel Allegretti is the author of The Plague Psalms, which appeared in 2000 from The Poet’s Press and is now in its third edition. His second collection, Father Silicon, also from The Poet’s Press, was selected by the Kansas City Star as one of the 100 Noteworthy Books of 2006, a list that included novels by Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy.
K. Biadaszkiewicz is the author of poems, plays, and stories published and/or produced in the US, Europe, and Asia, most recently, “Why I Hate Guns” (Out of Line); He Came Home One Day While I Was Washing Dishes (BestShort American Play Anthology Applause Books); THE NEW SIGN, (ID America Theatre Festival, NYC). She lives and works in Trenton, Michigan.
Peter Blair has published two books of poetry. His latest book, The Divine Salt (Autumn House Press) came out in 2003. He teaches English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
David Bolduc has recently been published, or accepted in Poetry Review, Knode, Paper Wings, Origami Condom, Ezra, Poetry International, and Timshel. Ha has a BA in Social Science from the University of Maine and studied anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York.
Michelle Bonczek is a co-founder of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics and a PhD candidate at Western Michigan University. She completed an MFA at Eastern Washington University and an MA at SUNY Brockport. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Crazyhorse, Green Mountains Review, and The Progressive, and is forthcoming in Cream City Review and Orion.
Michael Campagnoli has worked as a waiter, fisherman, journalist, painter, and short-order cook. In 2001 he won the New Letters Poetry Award and in 2004 the All Nations Press Chapbook Award. His fiction and poetry have appeared in New Letters, New York Stories, Saint Ann’s Review, Nimrod, Illuminations, the Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. A chapbook, Ah-meddy-ga, was published in August 2005. Michael has chapbooks forthcoming in 2008 (Pudding House Publications), (Kikukus, Amsterdam Press) and early 2009 (Loons, Pudding House Press). Three of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He can be seen most mornings running somewhere along the coast of Maine with his mongrel dog, Yogi, and Anthony, his equally mongrel fourteen year-old son.
Robin Carstensen’s work has been published in various journals including Runes and the Comstock Review, and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and Many Mountains Moving, where she is the recipient of their 2007 poetry award. She has received two collegiate Academy of American Poets prizes and several Creative Writing and Essay Scholarships
from Oklahoma State University where she currently co-manages the Cimarron Review.
Michael Casey had a book, Obscenities, in the Yale Poetry Series in 1972. Since then he has had two books, Permanent Party and The Million Dollar Hole, that have settings at Fort Leonard Wood.
J.P. Dancing Bear is the author of Conflicted Light (SalmonPoetry, 2008), Gacela of Narcissus City (Main Street Rag, 2006), Billy Last Crow (Turning Point, 2004), and What Language (Slipstream, 2002). His poems are published in Shenandoah, Poetry International, New Orleans Review, National Poetry Review, Marlboro Review and many others. He is the editor of the American Poetry Journal. His collection Tethers is a finalist for the 2008 National Poetry Series.
Mahmoud Darwish (March 13, 1941 – August 9, 2008) was a respected Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output, and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. Darwish published over thirty volumes of poetry and eight books of prose. His work has been translated into 35 languages as he is considered the most important contemporary poet of the Arab world, and several of his poems have been put to music.
Phebe Davidson is the author of several published collections of poems, most recently Fat Moon Rising, released this year Main Street Rag, and a new volume, The Surface of Things, is forthcoming from David Robert Books in 2009. She is the founding editor of Palanquin Press, a staff writer for The Asheville Poetry Review and Reviews Editor of Yemassee. In 2007 she received the Erica F. Wiest poetry award from Cream City Review and The Blue Earth Review’s flash fiction award. A recovering academic, she lives in Westminster, SC with her husband Steve and their cat Fripp.
Todd Davis teaches creative writing, environmental studies, and American literature at Penn State University’s Altoona College. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, have won the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, and have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals and magazines as The North American Review, The Iowa Review, The Gettysburg Review, West Branch, River Styx, Arts & Letters, Indiana Review, Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Poetry East, and Image. He is the author of two books of poems, Ripe (Bottom Dog Press, 2002) and Some Heaven (Michigan State University Press, 2007). Poems from Some Heaven have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry.
Francis Davis has worked as a teacher, sports writer, caterer, mailman and phone solicitor. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife Sally and their three children Tess, Max and Sam. He’s won writing fellowships from The Vermont Studio Center, The Ragdale Foundation and the Millay Colony for the Arts.
Brandel France de Bravo won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for her first collection of poems, Provenance, which will be released in the fall of 2008. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers, she is co-author of Trees Make the Best Mobiles: Simple Ways to Raise your Child in a Complex World (St. Martin’s Press).
Deborah H. Doolittle has lived in lots of different places, including a year each in England and Japan. She teaches at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Her last two chapbooks, No Crazy Notions and That Echo, won the Mary Belle Campbell Award and Longleaf Press Award, respectively. Other recent work may be seen in Blue Mouse, Wild Goose, The Lyric, and Sulphur River Literary Review. She is married and sharing living space with six cats and a yard full of birds.
ellen teaches creative writing and poetry for Santa Monica College, Emeritus Division. Her work has appeared nationally in such journals and newspapers as the LA Times, Slant, Mudfish, Rattle, Coe Review, and many others. Her awards include Blue Unicorn, Cape Cod Times, DA Center for the Arts, etc. Her books include 4 los angeles poets, Reverse Kiss, and The Gynecic Papers.
Rebecca Ellis lives in southern Illinois. She has previously published poems in Hanging Loose, Natural Bridge, and mostly recently on a bus as part of the Metro Arts in Transit 2008 Poetry in Motion project. She is a supporter and former board member of the St. Louis Poetry Center. She edits Cherry Pie Press, publishing a series of poetry chapbooks by Midwestern women poets.
Brian Ferguson-Avery is a writer who lives in Danville, Pennsylvania. His fiction has appeared in Short Story, Pennsylvania English, Rosebud, and other places.
Stephen Frech has earned degrees from Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Cincinnati. He has published two volumes of poetry: Toward Evening and the Day Far Spent and If Not For These Wrinkles of Darkness. He is founder and editor of Oneiros Press, publisher of award-winning letterpress poetry broadsides.
Jeff Friedman’s fourth collection of poetry, Black Threads, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2007. His poems and translations have appeared in many literary magazines, including American Poetry Review, Poetry, 5 AM, Margie, Agni Online, North American Review, and The New Republic. He is a contributing editor to Natural Bridge and a core faculty member in the M.F.A. program in Poetry Writing at New England College.
Elena Georgiou’s book of poetry, mercy mercy me, won a Lambda Literary Award, and was reissued by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2003. Her recent work appears in Bomb, Denver Quarterly, MiPoesia, Lumina, Spoon River Review, Cream City Review, and Gargoyle. She is currently an editor at Bloom and at Tarpaulin Sky. She is also on the faculty in the MFA program at Goddard College, Vermont.
Christopher Goodrich currently teaches English to inner city Philadelphians. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Worcester Review, The New York Quarterly, Karamu, Kestrel, 5am, The Sycamore Review, The Cimarron Review, Hotel Amerika, Diner and Rattle among others. A chapbook, “By Reaching” has been published by Finishing Line Press. He is a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize recipient and holds an MFA from New England College. A full length manuscript, Nevertheless, Hello is currently seeking a publisher. He is also poetry editor of The Dirty Napkin at dirtynapkin.com.
Megan Grumbling’s work has appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Seneca Review, Passages North, the Indiana Review, and other journals. Appearing in this volume is a poem from Booker’s Point, her book-length portrait of an old Maine codger. Megan teaches writing at two seaside campuses, the University of New England and Southern Maine Community College, and is a theater critic for the Portland Phoenix. She is grateful for the support of a 2007 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Nicole Gulotta attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, and received an M.F.A from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Birmingham Review and Spectrum. She works in the nonprofit sector and lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of A Field Guide to the North American Family and is a 2008 fellow in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His short stories have appeared, most recently, in Glimmer Train, Canteen, and Best New American Voices 2008.
Jenny Hanning is from Maine, but lives in Austin, Texas. Her stories have, or will soon appear in Sou’wester, Third Coast, The Portland Review, Harpur Palate and others.
John Hart was born and raised in Kansas City, KS. He currently resides in Gainesville, FL. He has received an MFA from the University of Florida.
Erich Hintze lives with his wife, a dog, and a one-eyed cat in a rowhouse in Washington, DC.
Kayt Hoch has been pursuing art and writing full-time since 2002 and part-time since the late 60’s. The 80’s & 90’s were enjoyable science nerd years, highlighted by her National Science Foundation fellowship, and a rewarding career in biotechnology. To Kayt’s happy fascination, her poems and images are sometimes published.
Bette Lynch Husted lives in rural Oregon, where she writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and practices T’ai Chi. She is the author of Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land (OSU Press 2004) and a poetry chapbook, After Fire (Pudding House 2002), and a recipient of a 2007 Oregon Arts Commission Award. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Fourth Genre, Runes, and elsewhere.
Rosalie Morales Kearns is a fiction writer of Puerto Rican and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, with short stories published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Fringe, Kalliope, Specs, and other journals. She teaches at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Davy Preston Knittle, a sophomore at Wesleyan University, has recently been published in Susquehanna University’s The Apprentice Writer, and in the Spring 2008 issue of the Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts as well as in the Spring and Fall 2008 issues of The Claremont Review. Davy writes primarily about the process of acquainting one's self with subways, bridges, dogs, people, and adaptations to changes in landscape, scale and temperature.
Daniel J. Langton’s work had appeared in Poetry, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Harvard Advocate and similar journals. His books include The Inheritance and Life Forms (both Cheltenham Press). He lives in San Francisco and teaches at San Francisco State University.
Lyn Lifshin’s Another Woman Who Looks Like Me was just published by Black Sparrow at David Godine October, 2006. It has been selected for the 2007 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for previous finalists of the Paterson Poetry Prize. (ORDER@GODINE.COM ). Also out in 2006 is her prize winning book about the famous, short lived beautiful race horse, Ruffian: The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian from Texas Review Press. Lifshin’s other recent prizewinning books include Before it’s Light published winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow press, following their publication of Cold Comfort in 1997. Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of an award winning documentary film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass, available from Women Make Movies. Her poem, The No More Apologizing, the No More Little, Laughing Blues has been called among the most impressive documents of the women’s poetry movement, by Alicia Ostriker. An update to her Gale Research Projects Autobiographical series, On the Outside:Blues, Blue Lace, was published Spring 2003. What Matters Most and August Wind as well as She was Found Treading Water Deep out in the Ocean, In Mirrors, An Unfinished Journey and Novemberly were recently published Tsunami is forthcoming from BLUE UNICORN. World Parade Press will publish Poets, (Mostly) Who Have Touched me, Living and Dead. All True. Especially the Lies.. Texas Review Press will publish Barbaro, Beyond Brokenness in Fall 2008 and World Parade Books just published Desire in March 2008. Red Hen will publish Persephone fall 2008. Coatalism Press has just published 92 Rapple Drive and Goose River Press will publish Nutley Pond. Finishing Line Press will publish Lost In The Fog For interviews, photographs, more bio material, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of work and more, her web site is www.lynlifshin.com
Philip Loyd lives in Houston, Texas and is the author of 37 short stories. His work including essays, articles, poetry, and reviews has appeared in 82 publications in 7 countries with one story even produced for radio in Australia. Included in his 18 awards is the Hemingway Center Short Story Prize. Publications include: Writers Journal, Northwoods Journal, Dan River Anthology, River Sedge, Natural Bridge, The Distillery.
Stephen Massimilla’s poetry books and poems have won various awards, including the Sonia Raiziss-Giop Book Prize, the Grolier Poetry Prize, a Van Renssalaer Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize and two Pushcart nominations. Massimilla has new work in or forthcoming in AGNI Review, Barrow Street, Borderlands, Chelsea, The Colorado Review, Folio, Fulcrum, Quarterly West and elsewhere. He teaches modernist poetry and fiction in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Ed McManis is married to Linda and has two sons, Jamie and Sean. He works at the Denver Academy, A school for students with learning differences. His most recent publications include Postcard to Mike, from the Blueroad Reader, and the chapbook Sister Mary Butkus, from Cervena Barva Press.
Kat Meads's most recent book is a novel, The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan (Chiasmus Press). Her third novel, When the Dust Finally Settles, is forthcoming from Ravenna Press. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a California Artist Fellowship and writing residencies at Yaddo, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Essays have appeared in Drunken Boat, American Letters & Commentary, The Southern Review and Fugue. "Salton Sea, Dreamscape" is part of a nonfiction manuscript, The Insomnia Essays.
Ed Minus is the author of the novel Kite. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Yale Review, TriQuarterly, The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere; he has had poems in The New Republic, New England Review, The Boston Phoenix, The Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. His book reviews and theater chronicles appear regularly in The Sewanee Review.
George Moore’s poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, Orion, American Literary Review, Chelsea, Nimrod, and elsewhere. His sixth collection, The Way Things Are, was a finalist for the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from Ashland Poetry Press in Ohio in 2007, and earlier for The National Poetry Series, His books include Headhunting (Edwin Mellen, 2002), The Petroglyphs at Wedding Rocks (Edwin Mellen, 1997), and The Long Way Around (Wyndham Hall, 1992). He teaches literature and writing with the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Robert Nazarene is founding editor of Margie/The American Journal of Poetry and IntuiT House Poetry Series, publisher of the winning volume of poems for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle award. His book of poetry is CHURCH. New work appears in Connecticut Review, New York Quarterly, Seneca Review and Vallum.
Leonard Orr currently holds the Buchanan Distinguished Professorship in English at Washington State University. His work has appeared in many journals including Black Warrior Review, Poetry International, Rosebud, and Poetry East. His chapbook, Daytime Moon, (FootHills Press, 2005) and his book-length collection, Why We Have Evening, is forthcoming from WordTech Communications.
Scott Owens is a graduate of the UNCG MFA program and former editor of Southern Poetry Review, as well as the 2008 Visiting Writer at Catawba Valley Community College. His first collection of poetry, The Fractured World, is due out from Main Street Rag in August. He is also author of three chapbooks The Persistence of Faith (1993) from Sandstone Press, The Moon His Only Companion (CPR, 1994), and Deceptively Like a Sound (Dead Mule, 2008). Scott Owens’ poems have appeared in Georgia Review, North American Review, Poetry East, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cimarron Review, Greensboro Review, Chattahoochee Review, Cream City Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Cottonwood, among others. Born in Greenwood, SC, he now lives in Hickory, NC, where he teaches and coordinates the Poetry Hickory reading series.
Allan Peterson is the author of All the Lavish in Common (2005 Juniper Prize) and Anonymous Or (Defined Providence Press Prize) and four chapbooks. Recent print and online appearances include: Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Bat City, Salamander, Iron Horse, Foliate Oak, Qarrtsiluni, and Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry.
Nancy Powers-Pritchard’s poems have appeared in Mankato Poetry Review, PoemMemoirStory, Small Spiral Notebook, Melic Review, Poetry Southeast, Fugue, Re)verb, New Harvest and others. She received her MFA at University of Missouri-St. Louis, and was runner-up in the 2005 graduate poetry contest. In addition to her ‘day job,’ she teaches poetry to middle school students in the St. Louis Public Schools for Springboard to Learning/Young Audiences.
John Savoie teaches great books at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. His first collection of poems, Metaphysical, is ready for a publisher.
Steven D. Schroeder’s writing is recently available or forthcoming from Verse, Beloit Poetry Journal, Pleiades, The Laurel Review, MARGIE, Court Green, and Verse Daily. He edits the online poetry journal Anti-, works as a Certified Professional Résumé Writer, and splits his time between St. Louis and Colorado Springs.
Barbara Sjoholm is the author of The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland, and Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer. Her memoir Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood was nominated for a PEN USA award and won a Lambda Award. The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea was also a finalist for a PEN USA award. She won a British Crime Writers award for Gaudi Afternoon, which was also made into a film. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Smithsonian, and American Scholar. She is working on the complete translation of With the Lapps in the High Mountains, as well as a historical novel about Emilie Demant Hatt.
Melvin Sterne worked union construction with the Boilermakers and the Ironworkers for 20+ years before returning to college to earn his MA (University of California at Davis) and his PhD (Florida State University) in English (Creative Writing). He has published 18 short stories, as well as several academic articles and poems. He travels frequently to India and has just completed a novel set in Bombay. Other stories have appeared in (among others) South Carolina Review, Blue Mesa Review, Willow Springs, Watchword, Kaleidoscope, Reed Magazine, StorySouth, and Twisted Tongue.
Steve Tompkins, a graduate of Colorado State University-Pueblo, hails from Fountain, Colorado and teaches English at a charter school in Colorado Springs. Recent work has appeared in Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, Cutthroat, Big Muddy, and Nerve Cowboy. Steve is currently working to complete his first volume of poetry and hopes to have it finished sometime this year.
Brian Trimboli is pursuing his M.F.A. at New York University. He was awarded a fellowship to attend the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, a partial scholarship to the Catskill Poetry Workshop, and awarded the George R. Dunham Poetry Prize. He has poems published and forthcoming in RATTLE, Puerto del Sol, and The Pebble Lake Review.
TWIXT is the mononym-onym of Peter Specker; he has had poetry published in Margie, The Indiana Review, Amelia, California State Quarterly, RE:AL, Pegasus, First Class, Pot-pourri, Art Times, The Iconoclast, Epicenter, Subtropics, and others. He lives in Ithaca, New York.
Jay Udall's work has recently appeared in Rattle, Caesura, Sage Trail, and The Pedestal, and his fifth book of poems, The Welcome Table, will be published by University of New Mexico Press in 2009. He teaches at the University of Nevada.
Tom Whalen’s fiction has appeared in Agni, The Idaho Review, The Iowa Review, Green Mountains Review, The Literary Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Witness and other journals. His recent books are An Exchange of Letters (stories) and Dolls (prose poems). He lives in Stuttgart, Germany.
Menno Wigman is the author of several books of poetry and prose and translations in the Netherlands. “Big City Life” originally appeared in Zwart als kaviaar [Black as Caviar] (Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2001).
Rynn Williams’s collection, Adonis Garage, was the recipient of the 2004 Prairie Schooner Book Award for Poetry, and was published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her poems have appeared in The Nation, Field, andThe Massachusetts Review among other magazines. The recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, she lives in Brooklyn.
B.A. Wingate was born in Ohio and educated at the Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. She has lived all over the United States and travels widely. Her poetry has recently appeared in the Santa Fe Literary Review and will appear in an anthology titled Looking Back to Place, published by Old School Books in 2008. She is also a Climate Scientist and resides in northern New Mexico with her husband, a computational physicist, and their two dogs.
Joseph P. Wood’s first book, I & We, will be published by CustomWords in 2010. He is an avid runner and chowhound. He, his wife, and daughter currently reside in Tuscaloosa, AL.
Rewa Zeinati-Choueiri is originally Lebanese and has been living in the United States the past six years. She graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from UMSL. She is a writing tutor, freelance editor and painter. Her poetry has appeared on Mizna, and she is the winner of the 2008 senior award of the St. Louis Wednesday Poetry Club.
