Shome Dasgupta is currently a student at Antioch University-Los Angeles, pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing.  His fiction and poetry have appeared in Magma Poetry, The Quiet Feather, The Chickasaw Plum, Meadow, The Fifth Di..., and Si Senor. Forthcoming publications include appearances in Verdad Magazine, The Sylvan Echo, and Poetic Voices Without Borders 2, a poetry anthology.

Daniel DiStasio’s fiction has appeared in The Minnetonka Review, Pinyon, and The Caribbean Writer. His writing has appeared in The Out Traveler, Southern Voice, New Jersey Magazine, and many regional newspapers. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. He won the Key West Literary Guild’s Short Story contest in 2003 and 2004. He currently works for Alyson Adventures and leads adventure tours in Peru, Southeast Asia and Iceland. He was born in Syracuse, NY and lives in Key West, FL.

Matt Dube teaches creative writing at William Woods University. His stories have appeared in Gulf Coast, Charabanc Review, and elsewhere. This story is the first he’d ever finished about living in Ukraine, after five years of trying.

Dawn Forbes received her BA in Studio Art with emphasis in sculpture and ceramics in 1993 from Whitman College. In 2007 Forbes completed her MFA with Vermont College of Union Institute and University. Forbes’s artistic explorations encompass a wide variety of media and styles; however, threads of ritual, psychology, gender, and body image serve to tie her often-disparate works together. Forbes currently maintains her home and studio in an old church building in Milton-Freewater, OR.  Forbes’s artwork has been displayed in a variety of Northwest venues in WA, ID, OR, and CA but her works have traveled for exhibition as far as Alaska, Vermont and Connecticut. In addition to her studio practice, Forbes is currently serving as the Interim Director of Whitman College’s Sheehan Gallery.  She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Art for the Whitman Art Department and an Adjunct Instructor of Art for Walla Walla Community College.

C.S. Fuqua’s published books include The Native American Flute: Myth, History, Craft, Big Daddy’s Gadgets (novel), Divorced Dads: Real Stories of Facing the Challenge, Notes to My Becca: A Father’s Thoughts on Welcoming His Long-Awaited Child, Music Fell on Alabama, and Deadlines, a four-novel audio series. His work has appeared in such publications as Main Channel Voices, Dark Regions, Christian Science Monitor, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Cemetery Dance, Bogg, Year’s Best Horror Stories XIX, XX, and XXI, Amelia, Slipstream, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, The Writer, and Honolulu Magazine.

Peter Joseph Gloviczki lives and writes in Minnesota. His work is forthcoming in Margie.

Carol Goldberg passed away in 2002.  She wrote one collection of poems, between the years 1985-1997, from which “only the sun” is taken.

Jeremy Halinen (MFA, Eastern Washington University) is coeditor and cofounder of Knockout. His chapbook Fragments of Water (2003, St. Andrews College Press) won the Alan Bunn Memorial Award. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Dos Passos Review, Pontoon 10, Quarter After Eight, Rio Grande Review, and the 2008 Outside Voices Anthology of Younger Poets.

Deanna Kern Ludwin teaches creative writing & literature and coordinates the English Department’s Internship Program at Colorado State University.  For 11 years, she directed the Creative Writing Teaching Program.  In 2006, Ludwin received a Best Teacher Award from CSU’s Alumni Association.  Her poetry and flash fictions have appeared in ACM, Gertrude, Diner, Green Mountains Review, Portland Review, Seattle Review, and other publications. 

Buzz Mauro is a student in the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Columbia, Rosebud, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He teaches acting in Washington DC, and has co-authored three books on applied acting published by Penguin Putnam.

A palindromist by design, Michael Constantine McConnell is also a devout student of prose, poetry, and the 20-button Anglo concertina.

Robert McDonald’s poetry has appeared in Court Green, Boxcar Poetry, 42 Opus, Southern Poetry Review, and paragraph, among others. He lives in Chicago, where he is the buyer for an independent bookstore. Robert is the co-author, with Kathie Bergquist, of The Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago.

Michael Montlack’s work has appeared in Cimarron Review, New York Quarterly, Poet Lore, Court Green, Swink, 5 AM, Mipoesias and other journals. His chapbook Cover Charge will be published by Gertrude Press in 2008. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at Berkeley College and acts as an associate editor for Mudfish. This year he was a Ucross Resident and a Lambda Literary Foundation Fellow. He is currently editing an anthology: Diva Complex (Gay Men on Their Divas).

Liz Prato is a massage therapist in Portland, Oregon. Her fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Subtropics, Iron Horse Literary Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Contrary, and ZYZZYVA. She’s currently working on a novel about grief, art, sexual identity, and the cosmos.

Jayne Pupek is a poet and novelist from Richmond, VA. Her first novel, Tomato Girl, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books (2008). Also forthcoming in 2008 is Forms of Intercession (Mayapple Press), Jayne’s first book of poems. Her chapbook, Primitive, is available from PuddingHouse Press.

Kathy Skaggs is a poet whose work has been published in two anthologies in the Kentucky Feminist Writers Series as well as in many literary journals. She lives in the Maple community of Taylor County, Kentucky.

Carine Topal, a native New Yorker, writes and teaches in Los Angeles, California. She conducted poetry workshops for veterans in the New Directions Program, she participated in the grassroots organization California Poets in the Schools. Since 1982, she has anthologized the poetry of special needs children. She was a resident poet for the City of Manhattan Beach as well as artist-in residence for Manhattan Beach elementary schools. She has been conducting poetry workshops for adults for over 10 years. Her work has appeared in many journals in both Canada and the U.S. She is the recipient of numerous poetry awards, including the Jane Kenyon Poetry Award. In 2004, Carine was nominated for a Pushcart Prize; in 2005 she was awarded a June residency at Hedgebrook, in Washington State, as well as a fellowship to write in St Petersburg, Russia. Carine recently won the Robert G. Cohn Prose Poetry Award with a special edition chapbook, Bed of Want, forthcoming from Pessoa Press.

Ann Tweedy was born in 1971 and grew up in a small southeastern Massachusetts town where the smell of burnt chocolate from the Nabisco factory wafted over everything.  She’s always been nerdy and shy, but she loves to face her fears and try new and difficult things.  Even though she once thought she would lead a simple life, it has not turned out that way.  Her poems wrestle with the themes of dividedness that pervade her days.  She’s hoping to live her next life, assuming she has one, as the jellyfish called by-the-wind-sailor.  For now, she makes her home in Washington State.

Ginna Wilkerson is a doctoral student in Literature at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, where she also teaches in the English Department first year composition program. Her research interests include Scottish culture and literature, medieval literature (particularly mythical beasts), and contemporary poetry. Her poems have been published in the Inkpot Press 2006 anthology, featured on Poetry Soup, and short-listed by the Margaret Reid Poetry Award for traditional verse, Fog City Writers, and Cedar Hill Press. Ginna’s favorite poets include Gerard Manley Hopkins, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Nikki Giovanni, Richard Siken and Jay Hopler. She has two adult children  and lives contentedly in Tampa with her partner Marilyn and three spoiled cats.

Tiffany Lynn Wong is a 25-year-old writer who lives in Santa Cruz, California. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York where she studied Writing and Visual Arts. She currently teaches writing courses about the Asian Diaspora and Ethical Issues in Emerging Technologies for the University of California Santa Cruz. She and her girlfriend Megan Crawford have a ringneck dove named Helena.