Karen Carcia lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and spends time reading to kindergarteners.
James D’Agostino lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He has captained an actual forklift once and has been asked never to do so again.
Stuart Dischell is the author of Good Hope Road (Viking, 1993), a 1991 National Poetry Series selection, Evenings & Avenues (Penguin, 1996), and Dig Safe (forthcoming from Penguin in 2003). His poems have appeared in many magazines, including The Kenyon Review,Partisan Review, Ploughshares, The New Republic and Slate. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is frequently on the faculty in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He has received fellowships from Bread Loaf, the NEA, and the North Carolina Arts Council.
Mr. Brian Engel, once a baby, is now an undergraduate at a community college in Minnesota, a founder and editor of Swerve, an insane collector of soul and funk 7"s, and finally a DJ of said records. Some of Engel’s poetry has appeared.
Roger Fanning’s first book of poems, The Island Itself, was a National Poetry Series selection. His second book, Homesick, was published in April 2002 by Penguin Putnam Inc.
Rachel Contreni Flynn teaches poetry and practices law near Chicago. She’s presently fascinated by all types of tortfeasance. Proving that anything is feasible, Rachel is not only a card-carrying Forklift operator but also a proud Gold Star member of Costco.
Terri Ford was discovered at some half-assed coffeeshop reading back in the 50s where barefoot hipsters in Jesus sandals were snapping their none-too-hygienic fingers. Sometime after that she attended the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, which completed her test of the Emergency Broadcast System. She has been the recipient of grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Kentucky Arts Council, as well as the Kentucky Foundation for Women. In 1999 she was the Ohio Arts Council Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and in 2001 was a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, where she currently serves on the admissions board. Git on out and buy your own copy of her book Why the Ships Are She1 (Four Way Books, 2000) at once.
1 See also: Why the Boats Are Dope, as well as Why the Steamliners Are Creamy and Fine.
Despite having been born with only two arms and just one mouth, Dobby Gibson has courageously overcome his handicaps to produce a body of poetry that has moved and delighted disparate audiences from Minneapolis all the way to the farthest reaches of St. Paul, where he makes his humble home. His poems have been published under dozens of pseudonyms, including "James Tate," "Charles Wright," and "Jorie Graham," a cumulative body of work that makes him the only 47-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize in the history of American verse.
Amy Grimm is a flight attendant for the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. This is her first publication.
Shauna Hannibal has work appearing in 88, Spinning Jenny, and jubilat. She lives 4.42 miles from Forklift, Ohio headquarters, as the toy accordionist drives.
Matthea Harvey will be married to Rob Casper by Dean Young next September.
Born and raised in Bristol, Tennessee, Carolyn Hembree has poems out or forthcoming inantennae, The Cream City Review, CutBank, Faultline, jubilat, and Puerto del Sol. Last August, one of her poems was featured on Poetry Daily. "Pastoral One" is part of her first book-length manuscript, Fever Ribbons. Carolyn has an MFA from the University of Arizona and currently teaches at the University of New Orleans.
Tony Hoagland’s first book, Sweet Ruin, won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and the Zacharis Award from Ploughshares at Emerson College. His second book, Donkey Gospel, was the recipient of the 1997 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. He lives and teaches in the Iron City.
Sarah Manguso is the author of The Captain Lands in Paradise (Alice James, 2002). Her poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Best American Poetry series, and numerous literary journals. She lives in Brooklyn and works as a writing tutor at Brooklyn College.
Heather McHugh’s most recent collection of poems, The Father of the Predicaments, was published by Wesleyan in September 1999. Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan, which she translated in collaboration with her husband Nikolai Popov, was published in fall of 2000. In that same year also appeared her translation of Euripides’ Cyclops, published by Oxford University Press. She’s the author of several other books of poetry, includingHinge & Sign: Poems 1968—1993 (National Book Award finalist and winner of the Pollock/Harvard Book Review prize in 1994); and a book of literary essays, Broken English: Poetry and Partiality. She is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington and on the faculty of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. In 1999 she was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and in 2000 a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Joe Myer, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, is a poet, painter, musician, and a former fifth-generation farmer from Ovid, New York. He recently had the sense to get off the farm; you can find him in Saint Low or some dark pub in Somerville, MA.
Mary Jane Nealon is a poet and registered nurse. Her collection Rogue Apostle was published by Four Way Books in 2001, her second collection, Immaculate Fuel, is forthcoming. She currently works with people with HIV/AIDS in rural Montana.
David Rutschman lives next to a chicken coop in San Antonio, Texas. He teaches at Palo Alto College and the Cyndi Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center.
Amanda Schaffer’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Colorado Review,Spinning Jenny, Conduit, and Lit. She lives in Brooklyn.
Fred Schmalz’s chapbook, Ticket, appeared in October, 2002 from Fuori Editions. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Conduit, PomPom, ACM and Fuori. A nine poem broadsheet, Playback Box, appeared in the Forklift Press Poempaganda series in 2001. He has been a featured reader at walker Art Center and The Art Institute of Chicago. He lives in Brooklyn and co-publishes the literature and art journal Swerve.
Frances Sjoberg received her MFA from Warren Wilson College and recently completed a manuscript of poems called Slipknot. She is Assistant Director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center. She lives in the projects.
When not fighting crime, Paula Szuchman works at a corner above the Avenue of the Americas. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Spork, 88, and Barrow Street. She has been waiting a very long time for a hands-free headset.
William Waltz lives in Minneapolis, near the industrial zone. He is the editor ofConduit.
Ian Randall Wilson is the managing editor of the poetry journal 88. Recent work has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Spinning Jenny and Spork. His first fiction collection, Hunger and Other Stories, was published by Hollyridge Press. He is on the faculty at the UCLA Extension and is an executive at MGM Studios.
Dean Young is 6 feet tall, of variable weight.