Jeff Alfier lives in Tucson, Arizona, holds an MA in Humanities, and has served as an adjunct faculty member with City Colleges of Chicago - European Division. He is a member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. His publication credits include The Columbia Review (late 01), Conspire, CrossConnect, Electric Acorn (Jun 01), Niederngasse, Nieve Roja Review, Penwood Review (2002), Recursive Angel, Red Booth Review, Stolen Island Review, War, and Literature and the Arts. His poetry will also appear in an anthology to be published by McGraw-Hill.

Tim Bellows: "I’m a poet, teacher, and writer—in the spirit of wild places, work, good dreams, and shocking-wonderful images. I’ve taught research and creative writing for over thirteen years at colleges like Sierra and the University of Nevada-Reno. ~Earned a graduate degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; published in over 120 journals and magazines. A partial list: Midwest Quarterly, Modern Haiku, Northern Contours, Natural Bridge Magazine, Terrain, Panhandler, The Lucid Stone, Burning Cloud Review, and Wisconsin Review. ~ Recently saw publication of my poems in A Racing Up the Sky, a collection of two poetry sequences—and a generous helping of Kerby Smith’s resonant photographs of California’s Yosemite area. (from Eclectic Press: information/orders at 1-800-431-1579.) ~ Have continued to publish poems widely: they trek the wilds of California and attempt to reflect an agile mind and a heart's good listening and talk. (I suspect Yeats might approve; he said, “The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.”) ~ Earned a nomination for the 23rd Annual Pushcart Prize with “Huts Under Smooth Hills,” influenced by poems of the ancient Chinese and an anthology called A Drifting Boat. (For dedicated writers, I offer tips on how to revise creative pieces. They can try me here: timword@yahoo.com)."

Silvia Brandon, born 1949, La Habana, Cuba, mother of 4 sons, 1 daughter, and new abuela to two beautiful little girls; presently living in Pennsylvania, published in various online and print journals, including Disquieting Muses, Eclectica, Recursive Angel, Third Muse, The Poet's Canvas. Poems in Spanish included in a print anthology called Juntos published in Barcelona this past fall. Editor of Spanish edition of Niederngasse.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in East Texas, land of Budweiser and boviculture. Her book, Reading Berryman to the Dog, was published in December, 2000, by Jacaranda Press.

Robert Gibbons has had work online in The Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, Electric Acorn, Gargoyle Daily, The Literary Review, Slow Trains, and Stirring. He has work forthcoming in Cauldron & Net, In Posse Review, Janus Head, Linnaean Street, Recursive Angel, & Tatlin's Tower. A third chapbook of prose poems, This Vanishing Architecture, will be published this summer by Innerer Klang Press, Charlestown, MA. InnererKlang@aol.com. The editor of Linnaean Street has decided to launch a chapbook series with Robert's work titled, "Brief History of Erotic Gesture." Publication is planned for July or August. New work is forthcoming from Cauldron & Net, as well as, Tatlin's Tower.

Nathan Leslie's stories and poems have appeared in over thirty publications including Amherst Review, Wascana Review, Poetry Motel, Connections, The Crab Creek Review, The Higginsville Reader, Fodderwing, The Sulphur River Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Washington Post, Fodderwing, and Daybreak. He completed his MFA at the University of Maryland this past spring, where he won the 2000 Katherine Anne Fiction Prize. Nathan currently teaches writing at Towson University.

Jo Neace Krause has published in several literary journals including the Yale Review, University of Windsor Review, Other Voices, Exquisite Corpse, River City, University of South Carolina Review, George Washington Review and others. and currently has stories appearing in Witness Magazine (The Good In Men), Freelook E-Zine (Wheatstone Press), Wel Del Sol , In Posse,(The Whole World is Watching You). Jo's poems have appeared in Maverick, Wired Art for Wired Hearts, and Bon Fire. Jo lives in West Virginia.

Ron Lavalette lives in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, land of the fur-bearing laketrout and the bi-lingual stopsign. He was born in Connecticut, and has been sliding glacially northward ever since. He can be found online (currently or in archive) at: Red River Review, New Works Review, Able Muse, and Poems Niederngasse. His print credits include Maelstrom, Lynx Eye (featured poet), Pine Island Journal, and (forthcoming) Raintown Review.

Lucas Powers teaches English and Folklore at Tennessee State University, an historically black college in Nashville, TN. Lucas received his PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and has an MA in Folklore from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is married to Jackie O'Keefe and has a daughter Phoebe.

Sam Rasnake has had poems appear in numerous journals such as Poem, Literal Latte, Portland Review, and Switched-on Gutenberg. He is the author of two collections, Necessary Motions (Sow's Ear Press) and Religions of the Blood (Pudding House). He also edits an on-line poetry journal, The Blue Fifth Review. http://www.angelfire.com/zine/bluefifth/index.html

Fernando M. Rivas is a Cuban-born writer and composer. He graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in 1977 with a Bachelor's in Composition after studying with National Arts Award recipient David Diamond and Vincent Persichetti among others. Mr. Rivas won the Marion Freschl Prize for Vocal Composition in 1975 and the Princess Grace Foundation Grant in 1987 for outstanding original work in musical theater. Mr. Rivas has composed for the theater, writing and co-writing fourteen musicals as well as hundreds of songs. In 1990 he began to write for the Children's Television Workshop and has composed a number of songs for the popular show Sesame Street featuring singers as diverse as Celia Cruz, Gloria Estefan and Cindy Lauper. In 1995 and in 1996, along with the other writers and composers on Sesame Street Mr. Rivas was the recipient of 2 Emmys for his work on that show. In 1997, Mr.Rivas, along with writer Luis Santeiro, was a recipient of the Richard Rodgers Award for the musical-theater piece: Barrio Babies. Earlier in the same year, Gloria Estefan recorded Mr. Rivas' song Mambo I, I, I on the Grammy-winning Elmopalooza album for Sesame Street Productions. In 1999, Barrio Babies was produced by the Denver Center Theatrical Company. Earlier that year, Mr. Rivas collaborated with David Varquez on the musical El Bluebird at the University of Florida at Gainesville. Also, on March 21st, 2000 the world premiere of Selena, Forever, a musical Mr. Rivas composed based on the tragic life of the renown Tejano singer, took place in San Antonio to warm reviews and standing ovations. Selena, Forever embarked on a six city tour and returned in 2001 to open in Los Angeles. Mr. Rivas' poetry and prose has been published in Conspire and in other web publications.

John Sokol is a writer and painter living in Akron, OH. His poems have appeared in America, Antigonish Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Georgetown Review, New Millennium Writings, The New York Quarterly, and Quarterly West, among others. His short stories have appeared in Akros, Descant, Mindscapes, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Redbook, and other journals. One of his stories has been translated into Danish, and, another, into Russian. His drawings and paintings have been reproduced on more that thirty-five book covers. His chapbook, "Kissing the Bees," winner of the 1999 Redgreene Press Chapbook Competition, is available through Amazon.com

David Starkey was Fulbright Professor of English at the University of Oulu, Finland, in the fall of 1999. He currently lives with his wife, Sandy, and their daughter, Miranda, in Santa Barbara, California.

Rex Swihart: "Though I am many, I'll be contented to spotlight only my quadruplicate-self which, like a nested Matryoshka doll, consists of me and the-family-within: RLS (I'm shy, so until we're more intimate the initials will do), Ania (the devoted wife), Katia (started kindergarten in September), and Nadja (quite the fledgling at 1.5 yrs). I read heavily. Imbibe moderately. Work when I have to (math teacher). Am hounded by all nine muses at once. One of many favorite quotes: "You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words. Long did I hate you, long did I fear you. I might--" (C. S. Lewis). Poetry is just another word for creative writing. I have a long list of literary heroes, mostly dead guys: Samuel Beckett, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, T. S. Eliot, Zbigniew Herbert."

Diane Tucker lives near Vancouver, British Columbia. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia in 1987, Diane married and worked for several years as a library clerk. She now cares for her two children, writes, reads, walks Doxa the dog, watches reruns of Red Dwarf and sing in her church choir.