Jim Benz lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two cats. His poems
have appeared in various print and online publications, including Haggard and Halloo, Unlikely Stories, Pralaton, Letter X, unarmed, Sein und Werden, and DISPATCH.

Christopher Butters is the author of two books, The Propaganda of a Seed (Cardinal Press, 1990) and Americas (Vietnam Generation, 1998).   His work has most recently appeared in Blue Collar Review, Pemmican and Cedar Hill Review.   A court reporter in New York City, his recent campaign for president of his AFSCME local won 32% of the vote.   He has also been the poetry editor of Political Affairs: A Journal of Marxist Thought. His most recent publication is The Algebra of Doing It, published by Partisan Press.

Jared Carter is a Midwesterner from Indiana. He has published three books of poems. A fourth, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, was recently issued by Wind Publications in Kentucky. The book consists of a series of narrative poems dealing with incidents in American history from the Revolution to the present. For more information please visit Jared Carter's web site at http://www.jaredcarter.com.

Corey Cook's poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear, in Children, Churches and Daddies, Entelechy International, Lilliput Review, Nerve Cowboy, The November 3rd Club, "remark.", The Shit Creek Review, The Wilderness House Literary Review. He lives and works in New Hampshire. Corey edits The Orange Room Review with his wife, Rachael.

Tony Christini is the author of Political Fiction: Ganoga, Homefront, YouthTopia and Other Works. He is the creator of the websites Political Novel and Imaginative Literature and Social Change. With Mike Palecek and Andre Vltchek, he is the cofounder of Mainstay Press.

Philip Dacey's most recent full-length book, his eighth, is THE MYSTERY OF MAX SCHMITT: POEMS ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF THOMAS EAKINS (Turning Point, 2004). Two recent chapbooks are THE ADVENTURES OF ALIXA DOOM AND OTHER LOVE POEMS (Snark, 2003) and MR. FIVE-BY-FIVE (Pudding House, 2005). He recently moved from Minnesota, his base for 35 years, to Manhattan's Upper West Side. His website is: www.philipdacey.com.

Lisa Hickey is an author, poet and entrepreneur. She owns an advertising agency, where she has written countless ads, commercials, radio spots and brochures. She is also the author of two non-fiction books on advertising's creative process. Her poems have been published in Slipstream, Prose/Axe, Nerve Cowboy, Pemmican, Curbside Review and Branches Quarterly. The walls of her house are wallpapered with her favorite poems.

Juleigh Howard-Hobson has appeared in The Barefoot Muse, The Raintown Review, Contemporary Rhyme, The Quarterly Journal of Food and Car Poems, Shit Creek Review, Mezzo Cammin, The Hypertexts, Odin's Gift, Idunna, Shatter Colors Literary Review, Appalling Limericks, Arabesques Print Review, Workers Write, Flipside and HipMama Magazine.

Maggie Jaffe, when she's not obsessing about the striking similarities between George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler's foreign policies, tries her best to adapt to the 21st century. She is currently working on Flic(k)s: Poetic Interrogations of American Cinema. Her two most recent books, 7th Circle and The Prisons, both won the San Diego Book Award for Poetry. She will never apologize for the 60's.

Lissa Kiernan is Associate Editor of the poetry journal Arsenic
Lobster. She received her MA from the New School for Social Research and her BA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her poetry credits include The Yale Journal for the Humanities in Medicine and MIPOesias Magazine. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Cleo Fellers Kocol has been writing and publishing prose for years. Although she didn't start writing poetry until the age of 74, six years later she is proud to be among those keeping the writing soup stirred. She has been published in a variety of journals, including Mobius, Querqus Review, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Song of the San Joaquin, Blue Collar Review and California Quarterly. She was Grand Prize Winner of the Artists' Embassy International Contest in 2003 and first place winner in 2006. Her poetry was choreographed to music and danced at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 2003.

Kristine Ong Muslim has more than three hundred stories and poems published/forthcoming in mostly genre professional and small press magazines and anthologies. Her mainstream poems have been published or will appear in Adbusters, Bleeding Quill, FireWeed,
Free Verse, Jones Av, Megaera, The Pedestal Magazine, T-Zero: The Writer's Ezine, and elsewhere.

Mark Pawlak grew up in Buffalo, New York, and has lived in the Boston area for almost forty years. He has taught writing, science and mathematics at various levels and is presently Director of Academic Support Programs at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where he teaches mathematics. Pawlak's original poems, and his translations from the German of Bertolt Brecht and others, have appeared widely in magazines, journals, and anthologies. SPECIAL HANDLING: Newspaper Poems New and Selected is the latest of his four poetry collections. He has received awards from the Massachusetts Artist Fellowship Program and from the Fund for Poetry. He is co-editor of Hanging Loose Press based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded in 1966, Hanging Loose is arguably the oldest, continuously running, independent, literary magazine and press in the country. Hanging Loose counts among its stable of notable poets Sherman Alexie, Ha Jin, Jayne Cortez, and Hettie Jones. Last year Pawlak edited Shooting the Rat: Outstanding Poems and Stories by High School Writers, the third in a series of his anthologies drawn from the celebrated high school section of Hanging Loose magazine. Shooting the Rat is a collection of extraordinary poems and stories by 93 of the nation's most outstanding high school writers and it was recently name a 2003 top young adult non-fiction title by both VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates) and by the Association of Pennsylvania School Librarians. All the work first appeared in the special high school section of Hanging Loose magazine, the standard for cutting-edge work by teenage writers since 1968. Pawlak has given hundreds of readings and performances of his work locally, across the nation, and overseas.

Doren Robbins has published poetry in over seventy literary journals, including The American Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Indiana Review, International Poetry, Hawaii Review, Paterson Literary Review, Sulfur, New Letters, 5 AM, Exquisite Corpse, Willow Springs, Bombay Gin and Hayden's Ferry Review. Essays and book reviews have appeared in Sagetreib, Contact II, Onthebus, and The Daily Iowan. From 1975-82, he was co-editor for the Los Angeles-based journal Third Rail. In 1994 he served as a contributing editor to the Japanese-based literary journal Electric Rexroth. Robbins has received a state fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts, as well as prizes, grants, and awards from The Indiana Review, River Styx, Literal Latte, Passaic Poetry Center, the Loft Foundation, The Centrum Residency Program, The Judah Magnes Museum (first prize for the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Jewish Poetry Award), The Chester H. Jones Foundation (commendation prizes in '93, '96 and '97), The Lane Literary Guild (first prize), The Seattle Arts Commission and, as an editor, from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and The California Arts Council. His four previous collections are Driving Face Down, winner of The Blue Lynx Prize, Lynx House Press, 2001; The Donkey's Tale (Red Wind Press, 1998); Sympathetic Manifesto (Perivale Press, 1987); and The Roots and the Towers (Third Rail Press, 1980). His chapbooks are Dignity in Naples and North Hollywood, introduction by Philip Levine (Pennywhistle Press, 1996), Under the Black Moth's Wings (Ameroot, 1987); Seduction of the Groom (Loom press, 1982). In 2006, Eastern Washington University Press will publish a new book of poems, My Piece of the Puzzle. A mixed media artist as well as a writer, two of his works are currently on exhibit at the Crossing Boundaries: Visual Art by Writers exhibit, held at the Paterson Museum in New Jersey. Currently, he teaches creative writing and literature at Foothill College where he is director of the Foothill Writers' Conference.Currently, he is Professor of Creative Writing/Literature at Foothill College, where he is coordinator for The Foothill Writers' Conference.

Edward Schelb's Dogbelly poems explore the psyche of a rhythm guitarist for a Texas swing band. He grew up in a working class family in Oklahoma, and his poems explore the sensibility and the language of Tulsa and the surrounding areas. He has published a number of critical essays on contemporary poetry, including recent essays on Robert Kelly and John Yau, as well as many poems. Currently he lives and works in Rochester, New York.

Anthony Seidman has published short fiction and poetry in The Bitter Oleander, Hunger, Pearl, Borderlands, and The Wandering Hermit Review. He translated and edited a volume of Miguel Angel Zapata's poetry entitled A Sparrow In The House of Seven Patios, published by The Latino Press, and a suite of his poems were published in the anthology Corresponding Voices, published by Point of Contact and Syracuse University Press. He has recently invested a lot of energy in translating contemporary American poets into Spanish, and has published versions of such diverse poets as Paul B Roth and John Olson in Mexican journals such as Solar.

Tom Sheehan's Epic Cures, (short stories), 2005 from Press 53 won an IPPY Award from Independent Publishers. A Collection of Friends, (memoirs), 2004 from Pocol Press, was nominated for PEN America Albrend Memoir Award). His fourth poetry book, This Rare Earth & Other Flights, issued by Lit Pot Press, 2003. Print mysteries are Vigilantes East and Death for the Phantom Receiver. An Accountable Death is serialized on 3amMagazine.com. Five novels seek publication. His short story collection, Brief Cases, Short Spans, is under consideration. He has eight Pushcart nominations.

Theresa Swanson works as a legal secretary in Omaha, Nebraska. Having raised her three children, she is pursuing a master's degree in writing and English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She lives, proudly, in the same working class neighborhood in South Omaha where she grew up.

CarrieAnn (CAT) Thunell has been published in over 70 print magazines (in 7 countries) and in over 8 magazines online. She is editor of the print magazine Nisqually Delta Review, http://NisquallyDeltaReview.bravehost.com , has served as a guest editor for the Santa Fe Broadsides, and is a peace and ecology activist, backpacker, nature photographer, artist, and poet. CAT also volunteers for the Olympic Forest Coalition, whose mission of the Olympic Forest Coalition is to protect and restore forest and aquatic ecosystems on the public lands of the Olympic Peninsula.

Rob Whitbeck is a farmer and timber thinner living in eastern Oregon. A full-length collection, Oregon Sojourn, is available from Pygmy Forest Press. A second collection, The Taproot Confessions, also from Pygmy Forest Press, was released in the summer of 2003.

Marilyn Zuckerman has published four books of poetry: Personal Effects (Alice James Books, Cambridge, 1976), Monday Morning Movie (Street Editions, N.Y, 1981), Poems of the Sixth Decade (Garden Street Press, 1993), and from Cedar Hill Publications,
Amerika/America, 2002, as well as a chapbook from The Greatest Hits series, Pudding House Publications, 2001. Her many poem publications include magazines such as New York Quarterly, The Little Magazine, Nimrod, Pig Iron, Mystic River Review and Pemmican (last two online) She has also received a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award and an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award.

Fredrick Zydeck is the author of eight collections of poetry. T'Kopechuck: the Buckley Poems is forthcoming from Winthrop Press later this year. Formerly a professor of creative writing and theology at the University of Nebraska and later at the College of Saint Mary, he is now a gentleman farmer when he isn't writing. He is the editor for Lone Willow Press.