Barbara Adams is the author of two books of poetry and a book of literary criticism on Laura Riding.  Her short stories, essays and poems have been published widely in magazines and anthologies.  She has also written a play on Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, produced by Mohonk Mountain Stage Company in New Paltz, NY.  Her poem Henry Jones, from Wales won the 2007 Robert Frost Foundation Award.  She is Professor Emerita of English at Pace University. 

Rosebud Ben-Oni has been a Rackham Merit Fellow, a Leopold Schepp Scholar and given a Horace Goldsmith Grant to work on her novel-in-progress Canopy of Crows. Recent publications include Slice Magazine, Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature, and The Texas Poetry Review. Her play Nikita premiered at the Shotgun Theater Festival at the Gene Frankel Theatre, and she is working on a new play, commissioned by the Leah Ryan Memorial Foundation, for full production in November 2009.

Randall Brown teaches at Saint Joseph's University and Rosemont College. He holds an MFA from Vermont College. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, Saint Ann's Review, Evansville Review, Laurel Review, Dalhousie Review, upstreet, and others. He is the author of the award-winning collection Mad to Live (Flume Press, 2008) and the Lead Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly.

Ann Cefola is the author of Sugaring (Dancing Girl Press) and the translation Hence this cradle (Seismicity Editions).  A 2007 Witter Bynner Poetry Translation Residency recipient, she also received the 2001 Robert Penn Warren Award judged by John Ashbery. Ann works as a creative strategist with her own company, Jumpstart (jumpstartnow.net), in the New York suburbs where she lives.

Cameron Conaway is a graduate of Penn State Altoona and is the Poet-in-Residence at the University of Arizona’s MFA Creative Writing program. He teaches creative writing for the Tohono O’Odham of Sells, for Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and for female juveniles in Tucson.

John Lee Conaway was born in Rockingham, North Carolina. When he was two years old he moved to Washington, DC, with his mother. He lived there until the age of six, then moved to Cambridge, Maryland, with his mother, brothers, and sister. His life with the justice system started with this move, and he is presently on Safekeeping awaiting a new trial after spending sixteen years on Death Row in North Carolina.

Erika Dreifus is Director of Communications for the Central Office of Academic Affairs at The City University of New York. When she's not at the office, she writes prose and poetry and serves as a contributing editor for The Writer magazine. Her work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including Solander: The Magazine of the Historical Novel Society (UK), which published an earlier version of "For Services Rendered." Web: www.practicing-writer.com.

Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow’s poetry has appeared widely in literary journals, including The American Poetry Review, Chelsea, The Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology, American Literary Review, Diner, Tusculum Review, Smartish Pace, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review and Gulf Coast.  New poems appear in the nature anthology In The Eye and are forthcoming in the international poetry anthology, Not A Muse.  Her book manuscript, The Day Judge Spencer Learned the Power of Metaphor, is under consideration with several publishers.

Deborah Gold (pseudonym) is a foster parent, writer, and teacher.

Kathleen Hellen’s work has appeared in Barrow Street; Bryant Literary Review; theCortland Review; theHollins Critic; Natural Bridge; Nimrod; Prairie Schooner; Runes; Southern Poetry Review; among others. Awards include the Washington Square Review, James Still andThomas Merton poetry prizes, as well as individual artist grants fromthe state and the city. She is a poetry editor for the Baltimore Review.

Jon L. Jensen is a Wyoming native. He lives in New York City and works as an instructor at the Kingsborough English Language Institute. He holds degrees in Russian, Classics and Rhetoric. He is currently completing an MFA at the City College of New York. A translation of Arseny Tarkovsky is forthcoming in the 2009 anthology of Two Lines: World Writing in Translation.

Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan is a full-time instructor at Houston Community College, Central Campus.  In 2006, she won the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry. Shadow Mountain, her first book, was selected by Kimiko Hahn and published by Four Way Books in 2008.  Her second book, Bear, Diamonds and Crane, will be published by Four Way Books in 2011.

Diane Kendig has a fourth book of poems coming out this year titled, The Places We Find Ourselves. Her recent nonfiction on class in academia appears in the Minnesota Review and in the anthology Those Winter Sundays: Female Academics and their Working-Class Parents. A recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships in Poetry and a Fulbright lectureship in translation, Kendig conducted a creative writing workshop at Lima Correctional Institution for 18 years. She currently lives in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Eric Larsen, a native of Minnesota, has lived in New York City since 1971, when he joined the Department of English at John Jay. Now retired from teaching, he’s able to spend all his time writing. His novels include An American Memory, I Am Zoë Handke, and the newly-published The End of the 19th Century. He is also author of A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit. He is online at http://www.ericlarsen.net

Charles Lowe’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bitter Oleander, Guernica, Raven Chronicles, Fiction International, Evergreen Review, Hanging Loose, Pacific Review, and elsewhere.  He is an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Alfred.  At present, he is living in Shanghai, China, with his wife and daughter where he is a Visiting Lecturer at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Paul Mariani is The University Professor of English at Boston College. He is the author of sixteen books, most recently Deaths & Transfigurations: Poems and Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life. He taught at John Jay College from 1966 to 1968, before leaving for the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. Among his students was Frank Serpico.

Rick Marlatt teaches English in Nebraska. He has BAs in English and Philosophy and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska, and he is currently pursuing a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside at Palm Desert. Marlatt’s most recent publications include The Pedestal Magazine, Superstition Review, and Barnwood International Poetry.

James Reed's fiction recently has appeared in such journals as The Gettysburg Review, Paddlefish, and Dogwood as well as the anthology Tribute to Orpheus (Kearney Street Books).  He also holds a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Alison Ruth was a feature writer for the popular music magazines Creem, Rock!, Rock Fever, and Wavelength.Her fiction has appeared in the Tulane Literary Magazine. She graduated from Upsala College with a bachelor’s degree in Communications.

Judith Skillman’s most recent book is Heat Lightning, New and Selected Poems 1986 – 2006, Silverfish Review Press. The Carnival of All or Nothing is forthcoming from Cervéna Barva Press in March, 2009.  Her poems have appeared in Poetry, FIELD, The Southern Review, JAMA, The Iowa Review, The Midwest Quarterly, and other journals.  She has been a Writer in Residence at Centrum.  Please see www.judithskillman.com for more information.

Rob McClure Smith's short fiction has appeared in Fugue, Confrontation, Other Voices, Barcelona Review, Warwick Review, Chapman and many other literary magazines.  He was a previous winner of the Scotsman Orange Short Story Award.

Mary Langer Thompson’s articles and poetry appear in various journals and anthologies, most recently, Ragged Sky Press’s Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems.   She is currently an educator in the high desert in California, where she moved to open a new public school as principal.

Kristin Camitta Zimet is the Editor of The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, a journal of fine poetry and art. She works as a nature guide in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. Her first collection of poems, Take in My Arms the Dark, came out in 1999.  Her father, brother, and son are attorneys.