Guy Beining had three chapbooks published in 2011: Nozzle 1-36 (Presa Press), Measurements of Night III (CC Marimbo Press), Take Me Over the Wheel of It (Moon Publishing).  His poems have recently appeared in Fourteen Hills, Skid Row/Penthouse, Cairn, Charon Review, River’s Edge, Illuminations and Sierra Nevada Review.

Randall Brown is the author of the award-winning flash fiction collection Mad to Live (Flume Press, 2008), a collection that has been recently republished by PS Books in Philadelphia as a Deluxe Edition with “bonus tracks” (PS Books, 2011).  He directs and teaches in Rosemont College's MFA in Creative Writing program. He’s been published widely, both online and in print. He is also the founder of Matter Press and its Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.

Ace Boggess is currently incarcerated in the West Virginia Correctional system.  His poetry has appeared in many journals, including Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry East, RATTLE, Atlanta Review, Southeast Review, Florida Review and in the sixth issue of J Journal.  His books include The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Poetry, Highwire Press, 2003), Displaced Hours (novel, Gatto Publishing, 2004), and, as editor, Wild Sweet Notes II, an anthology of West Virginia poetry published in 2004.

Andrea Carlisle’s short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Northwest Review, Calyx, Willow Springs, Melusine, So to Speak and various other literary journals. She received an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist’s Fellowship (for fiction) and a fellowship from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts (for nonfiction). Most recently she co-wrote a documentary film, The Peasant and the Priest, about the effects of globalization on Tuscany (directed by Esther Podemski): www.thepeasantandthepriest.com.

A resident of Saint Paul, Minnesota, Amy Castillo graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2001. She spent the following ten years working as a staff attorney for the state district trial courts, researching and writing on a broad range of criminal and civil issues. She currently works as a management analyst for another state agency. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Halfway Down the Stairs, Midwestern Gothic, Specter Literary Magazine and 6 Tales.

Naomi Glassman recently graduated from the College of New Jersey and is pursuing a career in education.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award from The Comstock Review, and numerous poetry chapbook contests. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac and Best of the Net 2008 and 2009. His newest book of poems is A Little in Love a Lot (2011, Main Street Rag). To read more of his work, visit his website: www.paulhostovsky.com.

Jevon Jackson has been on lockdown for eighteen years (since he was sixteen years old).  Currently he works in the prison print shop.  He devotes his free time to writing, reading and crocheting; he also enjoys helping other prisoners fight (in civil court) for their most basic rights.  Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, his primary writing influences are Rumi, e. e. cummings, and Maureen (most fearless teacher, friend and push to write on).

Brad Johnson is an associate professor at Palm Beach State College, FL and has two chapbooks Void Where Prohibited and The Happiness Theory available at puddinghouse.com. His third chapbook Gasoline Rainbow is available at finishinglinepress.com. Work of his has recently been accepted by The Jabberwock Review, The Madison Review, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, The South Carolina Review, The Southeast Review, Steam Ticket, Willow Springs and others.   Brad Johnson’s poem “Texas Justice” was featured in the first issue of J Journal.

Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She graduated from South Dakota State University in Family Relations and Child Development. She is an editor of The Pen Women Magazine, the National League of American Pen Women publication, and has published in numerous literary venues.

Rebecca Givens Rolland is a speech-language pathologist and doctoral student in education at Harvard, where she serves as an editor of the Harvard Educational Review.  Recent creative work (primarily poetry) has appeared in Witness, American Letters & Commentary, Cincinnati Review and Zoland Poetry and is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly and Stand. Her website is www.rebeccarolland.com.

Practically a native Oregonian, Ryan Scariano graduated from Portland State University in 2003 with a BA in English. For the past seven years he has lived and paid bills by driving a delivery truck in the Portland area. His poetry has appeared online at Premiere Generation Inc. and in print in The Sunday Oregonian.

Judith Skillman is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, most recently The White Cypress (Cervena Barva Press, 2011). She is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, Washington State Arts Commission and other organizations. Her work has appeared in Poetry, FIELD, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The Midwest Quarterly and many other venues. Skillman holds an MA in English Literature from University of Maryland and lives in Kennydale, Washington. For more on her work, please see www.judithskillman.com

Laurence Snydal is a poet, musician and retired teacher.  His poetry has appeared in such magazines as Columbia, Caperock, Lyric and Gulf Stream and in many anthologies including The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2000 and Visiting Frost.

Shanee Stepakoff received an MFA in creative writing from the New School in 2009. She was the psychologist for the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone for over two years.  She also spent two years as psychologist with the Center for Victims of Torture, first in Guinea and later in Jordan.  Her previous publications include over a dozen articles in academic journals, including The Drama Review, The Arts in Psychotherapy and American Psychologist.  She resides in New York City.

Tim Suermondt has published two chapbooks and two full-length collections of poems, Trying To Help The Elephant Man Dance (Backwaters Press, 2007), and Just Beautiful (New York Quarterly Books, 2010). He’s had poems in many magazines and online, including The Georgia Review, Poetry, Poetry East, Blackbird, Poetry Northwest, Atlanta Review and Bellevue Literary Review, with poems forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner and Stand Magazine (U.K.). He has poems in Poetry after 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets (Melville House Publications, 2002) and Visiting Walt (a Whitman anthology from the University of Iowa Press, 2003).  He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Virginia Thomas is a Southern Indiana native and received her degree in biochemistry from Indiana University. This year she was accepted to IU’s MFA poetry program and will resume her studies in the fall. She has been a volunteer at her local domestic violence shelter for two years and is trained as an On Scene Advocate for sexual assault survivors.

Bhikshuni Weisbrot lives in New York City and is President of the United Nations SRC Society of Writers.  She has worked for the UN since 1989.  She is the winner of the 2005 Bright Hill Press Chapbook contest for her collection, A Sense of Place.   She is a member of the theatre company Victory Banner Productions, which performs the work of Sri Chinmoy, most recently  “Siddhartha Becomes the Buddha” at 45 Bleecker Street.

Nicholas YB Wong is the author of Cities of Sameness (Desperanto, 2012). His works are forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Gargoyle, The Journal, Nano Fiction, Quiddity and REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters. He serves as a poetry reader for Drunken Boat and is currently lecturing on film studies and contemporary studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Fired from Hallmark for writing meaningful greeting-card verse, Fred Yannantuono once ran twenty straight balls at pool. His work was nominated for Pushcart prize in 2006.  His book A Boilermaker for the Lady (www.nyqbooks.org/fredyannantuono) has been banned in France, Latvia and the Orkney Isles. He will be the featured poet at Light Quarterly later this year. His next book To Idi Amin I’m A Idiot—And Other Palindromes is due out later this year.

Jessica Young’s Pushcart-nominated work has appeared most recently in Copper Nickel, Versal, and Cold Moutain Review.  She held the Zell Fellowship for poetry in Ann Arbor, MI after completing her MFA (poetry) at the University of Michigan, where she received two Hopwoods and the 2010 Moveen Residency. Her undergraduate work was at MIT.