Melissa Barrett lives and writes in Kent, Ohio. She has authored several vegan recipes and two chapbooks of poetry, Fabric Mausoleum and The Bloomery. She currently runs an all-vegan bakery and will teach writing next year at Wittenberg University.
Claire Becker teaches teenagers at the California School for the Blind. She holds an MFA from St. Mary's College and lives in San Francisco. Her poems have been published in The Tiny, Typo, Octopus, H_NGM_N, the Cultural Society and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Untoward, from Lame House Press.
Cara Benson’s writing appears in print and online. 88, pom2, HOW2, EOAGH, Sentence, BoogCity, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere. Other work includes chapbook Quantum Chaos and Poems: A Manifest(o)ation (BookThug), collaborative chapbook Spell/ing () Bound with Kai Fierle-Hedrick and Kathrin Schaeppi (Dusie), and video poems online at The Continental Review. In addition to teaching for Skidmore College, Benson makes poems every Tuesday with male inmates at Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility in upstate NY.
Catherine Lacey writes, blogs, interns and is a private chef in order to not think about the disappearance of the North American Honeybee. She has recently published in Dicey Brown Magazine and Lamination Colony. Her blog is CatherineLacey.com.
Joshua Butts is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cincinnati. His poems have appeared in Quarterly West, The Hat, Shampoo and The Adirondack Review. His chapbook, To Learn to Fingerpick Guitar was published in 2006 by Pudding House.
Liz Countryman is a PhD student at the University of Houston. Her poetry and criticism has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, Pebble Lake Review, and Tikkun.
Scott Elliott lives in Walla Walla, Washington and teaches at Whitman College. He is the author of the novel Coiled in the Heart (Putnam 2003).
Miss Terri Ford is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She’s been a fellow at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, a summer resident of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown through the Ohio Arts Council, and the recipient of several grants. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Conduit, Agni and many other journals. She is the author of Why the Ships Are She (Four Way, 2001) and Hams Beneath the Firmament (Four Way, 2007).
Rae Gouirand's poems have appeared most recently in American Poetry Review, jubilat, Michigan Quarterly Review, Bellingham Review, Spinning Jenny, and The Concher. The winner of a Hopwood Award, the Meijer Fellowship, and a summer 2008 fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, she lives in Davis, California.
J. M. Green is the author of the chapbook Super Rich (Pudding House, 2008). Recent poems appear in The League of Laboring Poets, Milk Money, and Trellis. He is currently writing a feature article on Cincinnati police canine Bandit who died in the line of duty. Become his friend at www.myspace.com/jmgreen_poet.
Whit Griffin’s recent poems have appeared in First Intensity, and Octopus #8 featured sections of a collaborative project with Andrew Hughes. Currently he divides his time between Vermont and Memphis. Along with Mr. Hughes, he co-founded the journal, Tight, in 2001.
James Grinwis lives in Florence, MA, and edits Bateau, a journal. Other items from One Briefcase, Two Landscapes, and a Fuse have appeared in 580 Split, Bird Dog, Caketrain, Dusie, Mississippi Review, and Quarterly West.
Jess Grover recently graduated from Macalester College and lives in Chicago, Illinois. Three of his poems appear online in indigest magazine.
Catherine Hardy is Chair of the Academic Studies Department at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she teaches writing, literature, and film. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. In 2006, she received an Artist¹s Residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico, where she lived and enjoyed her last good spring.
Nathan Hauke lives in Salt Lake City. His poetry has been published in Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, XANTIPPE, Parthenon West, Colorado Review, Twenty Six, Electronic Poetry Review, Free Verse, Word For/ Word, Gutcult, and the tiny.
Scott Alexander Jones studies poetry in the MFA program at the University of Montana. His single goal in life is to exist for extended periods of time without working.
Sean Kilpatrick attends Oakland University and is published in La Petite Zine, MiPoesias, LUNGFULL!, Pindeldyboz, ACTION YES and elsewhere.
Amy King is the author of I'm the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an Alibi, both from Blazevox Books, and most recently, Kiss Me With the Mouth of Your Country (Dusie Press). Please visit www.amyking.org for more.
Andrew Kozma received his M.F.A. from the University of Florida and his Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Agni Online, Dislocate, and a non-fiction piece will soon be published by The Iowa Review. His first book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 First Book Award and was released in September of 2007.
Amy Lawless is editor of Press Body Press and a contributing editor for the Dick Pig Review. Her poems have appeared most recently in Barrow Street, Agriculture Reader, Red China Magazine, Sub-Lit, and the Best American Poetry blog. Her first book of poems Noctis Licentia is forthcoming from Black Maze Books. She lives in New York where she runs the Control Poetry reading series. For more information on Amy, please check out her blog at amylawless.blogspot.com.
Mark Leidner grew up in Tifton, a small town in south Georgia. He lives in Iowa City and teaches at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, IA. His chapbook The Night of 1,000 Murders is available from Factory Hollow Press (www.factoryhollowpress.com).
Matthew Lippman's collection, The New Year of Yellow, is published by Sarabande Books. It was a finalist for the 2008 Patterson prize. Upcoming work will appear in Barrelhouse and The American Poetry Review.
Christopher Lirette is currently on a Fulbright grant writing poems in the Acadian region of Canada. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Louisiana Review, Pebble Lake Review, and ReVisions. His recipe for Red Fish Courtbouillion comes in general from his Cajun roots and living in Acadiana and New Orleans, and specifically from his time as a private cook in Chicago, where he evacuated during Hurricane Katrina.
Chris Martin lives on Maple St. He is the author of American Music, recipient of the Hayden Carruth Award. Luck and innocence have got him this far. He is also a rapper, teacher, and editor-in-chief of puppyflowers.com. He stopped not looking and got stuck that way.
Laura McCullough’s second collection of poems, What Men Want, is due out in early ‘08 by XOXOX. Her first, The Dancing Bear, debuted in ‘06. In ‘07, Mudlark published her chapbook of prose poems, Elephant Anger, and she won her second NJ State Arts Council Fellowship, this time in poetry; the first was in prose. She has an MFA in fiction from Goddard College. In 07, she attended the Summer Solstice Writers Conference, went to Bread Loaf again as part of the Social Staff, attended the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Pebble Lake Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Iron Horse Quarterly, The Hiss Quarterly, The Pedestal, Nimrod, Boulevard, Tattoo Highway, Gulf Coast, Hotel Amerika, Poetry East, The Portland Review, and others.
Vestal McIntyre is the author of the story collection You Are Not the One, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and won a Lambda Literary Award. His first novel, Lake Overturn, will be published in 2009 by HarperCollins.
Heidi McKye, newly an American, lives, writes, and plays with a very small but quiet dog in Chicago, in an apartment across from the park. She is in hot pursuit of an MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they are kind enough to force a small group of first-year undergrads listen to her say things like “Just follow the rabbit down the hole, worst that can happen is you lose your head” on a weekly basis.
Trey Moody lives with his wife in Austin, Texas, in an old yellow house. He teaches English composition at Texas State University, where he is completing his MFA and is the poetry editor for Front Porch. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alice Blue Review, Parcel, Past Simple, and Word For/ Word, among others.
Jason Morris lives on a farm in San Francisco, where he edits Big Bell. His poems have appeared in Mirage #4 Period(ical), Ping Pong, Parthenon West Review and elsewhere. Currently stacked on his table: the new Collected Philip Whalen, Evangeline Downs by Micah Ballard, Facings by Jordan Stempleman, and Sorry, Tree by Eileen Myles.
Howard Norman’s most recent novel is Devotion. Last year he traveled for National Geographic to Northern Japan to write about the haiku master Basho.
Ethan Paquin’s initials are “EAP.” He drives a Nissan. He is left-handed. He has had root canals.
Emily Pettit is from Amherst, Massachusetts. Many people think Emily was born in Massachusetts though this is not true. Many people think Emily was born in a sandstorm, though this is also not true, it's just what she tells people. Emily is not sure why she does this and yet she can't seem to help herself. Other things that Emily does include: being an editor for Factory Hollow Press; being an editor for notmostrums online literary journal; co-curating the Whenever We Feel Like It Reading Series; and hiding for the North American Amateur Hiding Club.
Lee Posna grew up in NJ, which is a dump, and he will never return. He's just completed his MFA in poetry at Iowa and is putting the final touches on his manuscript “Verdure vs. Nature.” Lee plans to move to New Zealand in late August to reunite with his Kiwi fiancé, Therese Lloyd, the greatest living person and a fine poet.
Nate Pritts is the author of two books of poetry: Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX) and Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road). He edits H_NGM_N.
Emily Raboteau is the author of a novel, The Professor's Daughter. "First Movement" is an excerpt from her upcoming novel, Endurance. She lives in Harlem.
David Rutschman's work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Massachusetts Review, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, Seneca Review, The Southeast Review, and other journals. He lives in Providence, RI.
Jeremy Schmall is the editor & co-founder of The Agriculture Reader, & the author of a chapbook, Underneath an Obnoxious Moon, & an artist book, The Slapdown. His poems have been published in Hotel St. George, Pilot, & Juked. He lives in Brooklyn.
David Sewell lives in Brooklyn. He has poems in jubilat, Poetry East, Good Foot, La Petite Zine, H_NGM_N, and elsewhere, and he co-edits the online poetry journal Fou.
Jeff Simpson is a student at Oklahoma State University, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Stream, Big Muddy, Poet Lore, Nimrod, and Pebble Lake Review.
Justin Taylor is the editor of The Apocalypse Reader (Thunder's Mouth Press), and Come Back, Donald Barthelme (McSweeney's). His essay “Fort Smith, Arkansas—A Monologue,” was an honorable mention in Best American Essays 2007. His writing has been published by The Believer, NPR, The Agriculture Reader, and numerous other journals, magazines and websites. A chapbook of poems, More Perfect Depictions of Noise (X-ing Books) will be published in May 2008. http://www.justindtaylor.net
Alex Ward works as a receiving clerk, and has been recently published in Anemone Sidecar, Bateau, mentalcontagion, and KNOCK.