Julie Berman teaches writing at New York University. Her stories have appeared in Antietam Review, The Bookpress, and The Reading Room.

Joel Chace's poems have appeared in many publications including Lost and Found Times, Tomorrow, Big Bridge, pith, Coracle, Three Candles, paper tiger #01, 6ix, xstream, sidereality, and shampoo. He has published more than a dozen collections of poetry, including, most recently, Uncertain Relations (Birch Brook Press), Greatest Hits (Pudding House Publications), and o-d-e (Runaway Spoon Press). He is currently Poet In Residence at Mercersburg Academy and is Poetry Editor of 5_Trope Magazine at Webdelsol.

CAConrad's work has appeared in American Writing, Chiron Review, Exquisite Corpse, La Petite Zine, Pom Pom, Tool, and other magazines and anthologies. His books Frank and advancedELVIScourse are forthcoming from The Jargon Society and Buck Downs Books, respectively. He co-edits Frequency with Magdalena Zurawski and also edits both Banjo: Poets Talking and the new publication Whatever Happened To The Poet (Insert Name).

Linh Dinh is the author of a collection of stories, Fake House (Seven Stories Press 2000) and several collections of poems including his forthcoming collection, All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish 2003). His work has been included in several anthologies including Best American Poetry 2000. An Editor-at-Large for Xconnect, he currently resides in Certaldo, Italy.

Rachel Blau Duplessis is Professor of English at Temple University and author of six books of poetry and four books of criticism including Genders, Races and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry, 1908 - 1934 (2001) and The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice (1990).

Amy Holman has poetry in And We the Creatures: Fifty-One Contemporary American Poets on Animal Rights and Appreciation (Dream Horse Press, January 2003) and Poems for A Beach House, an anthology forthcoming from Salt Marsh Pottery Press. This is her third appearance in Xconnect. Other poems appear in American Letters & Commentary, Del Sol Review, Rattapallax, Van Gogh's Ear, and The Best American Poetry 1999. Her fiction is forthcoming in Night Train and Shade, and she has publishing essays in The Manhattan Review and The Artist's Toolbox, a soon-to-be feature on the Web site of the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches writers how to navigate the literary marketplace and directs The Publishing Seminars at Poets & Writers, Inc.

Cheryl Klein is a Los Angeles based writer who received her MFA in writing from the California Institute of the Arts. Her fiction has appeared in Westwind, Trepan, Doorknobs & Bodypaint and Delirium Journal and is forthcoming in Blithe House Quarterly. She works at the California office of Poets & Writers, Inc.

Chris McCreary is co-editor of ixnay press and author of The Effacements (Singing Horse Press). His reviews and interviews have recently been published in Drexel Online Journal, Rain Taxi, and Review of Contemporary Fiction.

Scott Malby has been featured in a number of e-zines as well as traditional print mediums such as Bathtub Gin. He prowls the internet attempting to make some kind of cultural and personal sense out of the contradictory complexities that electronic technology engenders.

Carol Mirakove is the author of temporary tattoos (BabySelf Press, 2002) and WALL (ixnay press, 1990). She is a founding member of the subpress collective, with whom she edited Fractured Humorous, a collection of poetry by Edwin Torres. Poems from her series “Fuck the Polis” (Los Angeles, California: 1999-2001) appear in Tool: A Magazine. She works in technology and lives in Brooklyn.

Nicholas Montemarano, a 2002 NEA grant recipient, is the author of a novel, A Fine Place, and a forthcoming short story collection, The Worst Degree of Unforgivable. His fiction has been published in Zoetrope, DoubleTake, Agni, Antioch Review, Gettysburg Review, Pushcart Prize 2003, and has been cited in Best American Short Stories 2001 and 2002. He teaches at Franklin & Marshall College.

Michael Moreth has recently participated in exhibits in SUK2, Sesto Senso, Bologna, Italy; The Keemo Gallery, an online internet gallery; and the USA Zaffix Gallery, an online internet gallery. His work has recently been featured in such publications as Kasper Zine, The Annihilation Fountain, The Art Bin and The Paumanok Review, and has been reviewed by The Hyde Park Herald, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Maroon, and The Jomo Shinbun.

Dennis Must is the author of Banjo Grease, Selected Stories. His plays have been performed Off Off Broadway and his fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Blue Cathedral: Short Fiction for the New Millennium (Red Hen Press), Rosebud, Portland Review, Salt Hill, Sun Dog, The Southeast Review, Red Cedar Review, Sou'Wester, Blue Moon Review, Exquisite Corpse, Big Bridge, Linnaean Street, elimae, and Green Hills Literary Lantern.

The works of Daniel Nester that appear in this issue are from his book, God Save My Queen, a song-by-song, album-by-album meditation on his obsession with the rock band Queen, due from Soft Skull Press. His work has also appeared in Nerve, Open City, Mississippi Review, Verse, and Best American Poetry 2003.

Hoa Nguyen edits Skanky Possum.

Ken Rumble was born and raised in Washington, DC, but now resides in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where he enjoys riding bicycles, parking in the shade, and listening to KEXP radio in Seattle. He directs the Desert City Poetry Series, which features established contemporary poets. He also teaches literature and writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Guilford College. His poems and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in 5AM, Word For Word, Moria, Pennsylvania English, Sugar Mule, Gumball Poetry, can we have our ball back?, Electronic Poetry Review, VeRT, and Rain Taxi Review of Books.

Natasha Sajé’s first book of poems was Red Under the Skin (Pittsburgh, 1994). Her second book of poems is Bend (Tupelo Press, 2003). Her work has been honored by the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize and the Robert Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, New Republic, Parnassus, Shenandoah, and The Writers Chronicle, among others. Natasha teaches at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, and in the Vermont College MFA in Writing program.

Jeremy Sigler is the author of two books of poetry, Mallet Eyes (Left Hand Books, 2000) and To and To (Left Hand Books, 1989). His poems have appeared in The Hat, Pierogi Press, and The Brooklyn Rail. He teaches sculpture at Yale University and at The Maryland Institute College of Art. He lives in Brooklyn.

Dale Smith edits Skanky Possum.

Phan Huyen Thu was born in Hanoi in 1972. A journalist by trade, she has published poems and short stories in many journals in Vietnam, France and the United States. She was awarded First Prize in poetry from the prestigious Hue journal, Perfume River, in 1997. Her works have been translated into English and published in the journal The Literary Review and in Of Vietnam: Identities in Dialogues (St Martin’s Press 2001).

John Edgar Wideman grew up in Homewood, PA. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he became the second African American to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. He published his first novel, A Glance Away, in 1967. He won PEN/Faulkner Awards for Sent for You Yesterday (1983) and Philadelphia Fire (1990), a fictional account of the bombing of the militant black group MOVE combined with an examination of his relationship with his son, now in prison. A recent novel is The Cattle Killing. He has taught at the University of Massachussetts since 1985.