Charlie Anders has come out as so many things she installed a revolving door on her closet. Her first novel Choir Boy won a Lambda Literary Award, and she co-edited the anthology She's Such A Geek. She publishes other magazine (www.othermag.org) and hosts the "Writers With Drinks" reading series in San Francisco. Find out more at www.charlieanders.com.

Judith Barrington is the author of three books of poetry, Horses and the Human Soul, published in 2004 by Story Line Press, and Trying to Be an Honest Woman and History and Geography, published by Eighth Mountain Press. Her book, Lifesaving: A Memoir, won the Lambda Book Award. Judith has taught creative writing at various universities and summer workshops for the past twenty-five years and is the author of Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art. She also edited the anthology An Intimate Wilderness: Lesbian Writers on Sexuality. Her poem “Crows” (from Horses and the Human Soul) was featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac in July of this year.

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán was conceived in Niagara Falls and born in Lenapehoking to a mixed-blood family. He has also lived in Deutschland, Aztlán, and Tongva, Muwekma Ohlone, and Anishinaabe territories. He has been blessed to work with numerous queer writers of color, including Lani Ka‘ahumanu, Cherríe Moraga, and Michèlle T. Clinton. The most important book he has ever read is Sister Outsider by Gamba Adisa/Audre Lorde. And he is also deeply grateful for the life/work of Beth Brant (Degonwadonti), bell hooks, Aurora Levins Morales, Haunani-Kay Trask, and Alice Walker.

Mary L. Brown received her MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her poems have appeared in Ekphrasis, Rattle, Into the Teeth of the Wind, and The Fourth River.

Kate Carroll de Gutes lives, writes, and tries to avoid fashion confusion in Portland, Oregon. Thankfully, Kate's wife helps her avoid the most egregious of clothing mistakes, e.g., wearing strappy heels with Carhartt double-knee logger pants. Kate's work has appeared in The Seattle Review, Crosscurrents Review, Poetry Motel, and other publications. This is her first piece in Gertrude.

Natasha Carthew is a young lesbian writer from Cornwall in the UK. She has been published in numerous national magazines in the UK including Diva, has won awards for poetry and has had three books of poetry published; her latest book Flash Reckless having been published by the internationally acclaimed lesbian/feminist publisher Onlywomen Press. Natasha lives in the country with her girlfriend, where she is currently working on a new body of country poetry and her first novel. She can be contacted through her website: natashacarthew.tripod.com.

Jedidiah Chavez is a working artist based out of Portland, Oregon. He holds an undergraduate degree in Art History from the University of Northern Colorado, and he is completing a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the Vermont College of the Union Institute & University, "an educational experiment in situational pedagogy." He has shown widely in the western United States and is the current Art Editor of Gertrude Press.

Philip Dacey is the author of eight full-length books of poems, the latest The Mystery of Max Schmitt: On the Life and Work of Thomas Eakins (Turning Point, 2004), and twelve chapbooks, the latest Mr. Five-by-Five (Pudding House, 2005). His awards include three Pushcart Prizes, a Discovery Award from the New York YM-Y-YWHA’s Poetry Center, and various fellowships (a Fulbright to Yugoslavia, a Woodrow Wilson to Stanford, and two creative writing from the National Endowment of the Arts). In 2004, he moved from Minnesota, where he lived and worked for thirty-five years, to Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingde worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist in Singapore. He has written features on Madonna, Michael Jackson, Bjork, Morgan Freeman, Jackie Chan and Donna Karan, amongst other celebrities. Trained in book publishing at Stanford University, he has edited thirteen books and executive-produced three audio-books, many pro bono for non-profit organizations including Riding For the Disabled Association, National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre, Sok Sabay Cambodia and Sage Counseling Centre for the Elderly. Formerly a lecturer in the School of Film & Media Studies (Ngee Ann Polytechnic), Desmond holds a B.A (Sociology/ Mass Communication) from the National University of Singapore and an M.T.S (World Religions) from Harvard Divinity School. His poetry anthologies include For the Love of God, which was exhibited at the Prague International Poetry Festival in 2004. Desmond lives in Massachusetts and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing. He has interdisciplinary interests in comparative mysticism, cognitive poetics and queer theology.

Sandra Lambert is a novelist, photographer, and all-around nature nerd who lives in Gainesville, Florida. Her writing has been accepted for publication in Conte: A Journal of Narrative Writing, Breath and Shadow, and the podcast WordKnot. It is also featured in the video project At the Corner of Me and Myself: Voices of Multiple Social Identity.

Terry Martin is an English Professor at Central Washington University. Her poems, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous publications (most recently in Calyx, Rattle, Sow’s Ear Review, Rosebud, Buckle&, and Sprindrift) and she has edited both journals and anthologies. A new book of her poems, The Secret Language of Women, is forthcoming from Blue Begonia Press. She lives with her partner, Jane, in Yakima, Washington—The Fruit Bowl of the Nation.

Michael Montlack’s work has appeared in Gertrude, Cimarron Review, New York Quarterly, Cream City Review, Poet Lore, The Ledge, Mudfish, Gay and Lesbian Review (Worldwide), Skidrow Penthouse, and other journals. This year he was awarded a University of Connecticut Soul Mountain Retreat Fellowship to complete his first book: Liz Taylor in Levittown. Also, in 2005, he was a Semi Finalist for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center’s Winter Fellowship and the First Place Winner of Gertrude’s Annual Poetry Contest. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at Berkeley College and completed an MFA at the New School.

Robyn L. Murphy is getting her MFA in Fiction at the University of Pittsburgh. She has been previously published in The Berkeley Fiction Review, The Cream City Review, Barbaric Yawp, and Parting Gifts.

Rumit Pancholi is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park, holding a degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. Next semester, Rumit will enter the University of Notre Dame’s MFA graduate program, focusing on poetry. Goals include working as a copyeditor or graphic designer at a publishing firm in New York or San Francisco.

J.M. Parker’s fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Frank, Harrington Gay Men's Literary Quarterly, symploke, and other journals. An expatriate for the past ten years, he did his graduate work at the University of Paris before moving to Istanbul, where he is an assistant professor of English literature, teaching courses on literary theory and the novel. “The Mother” is one of a series of interlinking stories about the roles lovers observe, play and replay, from a collection he is working on now. He is also currently seeking a publisher for a completed first novel.

Alice Stern’s work has appeared in Primavera, The Louisville Review, twice in Harpur Palate, Cottonwood, Sensations Magazine, Iconoclast, Phantasmagoria, and has just been accepted by Kalliope and Pointed Circle.

Over fifty of Ann Tweedy’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in literary magazines, anthologies, and online poetry journals. Recent publications include Clackamas Literary Review, Rattle, The Pedestal Magazine, Yalobusha Review, Avocet, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, and Stringtown Review. Her poetry manuscript, Unchartered Course, was selected as a semifinalist for both the 2003 Brittingham and Pollak Prize in Poetry awarded by the University of Wisconsin Press and the 2002 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry awarded by Zoo Press.

Sigrid Zahner is currently the head of the ceramics department at Purdue University and holds a BFA from Herron Art School, an MA in Studio Art, and is also an MFA candidate at Vermont College. She has exhibited widely in the United States, and her work can be found in many corporate and personal collections. She is currently represented by Wiessman Gallery in Chicago.