Bruce Covey is Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University and author of three collections of poetry - The Greek Gods as Telephone Wires, Ten Pins, Ten Frames, and the forthcoming Glass Is Really a Liquid - all from Front Room Publishers. His work also appears in Jacket, Explosive Magazine, Shampoo, MiPo, can we have our ball back?, Aught, Xcp, Word For/Word, and other journals.

Mien Dang was born in Da Nang in 1974 and came to the US in 1989. Partially deaf since the age of 13, she now lives in Florida. She has studied meditation with the Burmese monk Sayadaw U Silananda and the Vietnamese monk Sayadaw U Khippa. Her poems can be seen regularly in various Vietnamese print and web journals.

Pete A de Matteo does not yet have a bio.

Linh Dinh is the author of two collections of stories, "Fake House" (Seven Stories Press 2000) and "Blood and Soap" (Seven Stories Press 2004), and a book of poems, "All Around What Empties Out" (Tinfish 2003). His poems and stories are widely anthologized.

Ariel Djanikian is a recent graduate from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the First Place Winner of the The Phi Kappa Sigma Fiction Prize, 2004, which was judged by Amy Bloom.

Gregory Djanikian is Director of the Creative Writing Program and Associate Undergraduate Chair of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published four collections of poetry, The Man in the Middle, Falling Deeply into America, About Distance, and most recently, Years Later, all with Carnegie-Mellon University Press. His awards include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry magazine, and the Anahid Literary Award from the Armenian Center of Columbia University.

Stephen Dunn is the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing. He is the author of twelve collections of poetry including Local Visitations (W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs (1998), and Loosestrife (1996). His book Different Hours (2000) won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Sesshu Foster has taught composition and literature in East Los Angeles for 16 years. Previous books include Angry Days (West End Press), City Terrace Field Manual (Kaya Productions, Finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize 1997), and forthcoming, Atomik Aztex (City Lights, 2005).

Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski grew up in Chicago. His work has appeared in many journals including Triquarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares. He still lives and works on the south side of Chicago.

Harambee Grey-Sun has been a contributing editor to Our Times Newspaper for more than five years. His poetry has appeared in such literary journals as Reader's Quarterly and ERETE'S BLOOM. His first book of poetry, entitled The Black Ball, is currently available from Mellen Poetry Press.

Phan Nhien Hao is originally from Kontum, Vietnam. He immigrated to the United States in 1991 and now lives in Los Angeles. He has a BA in Vietnamese Literature from The Teachers College of Saigon, a BA in American Literature from UCLA, and a Master in Library Science, also from UCLA. He is the author of two collections of poems, Thien Duong Chuong Giay [Paradise of Paper Bells] (1998) and Che Tao Tho Ca [Manufacturing Poetry] (2004). His poems have been translated into English and published in the journals The Literary Review, Manoa and Filling Station.

James Hoch, who earned an MFA at the University of Maryland, was nominated for a 2000 Pushcart Prize for a poem of his that appeared in Story. Hoch, who grew up not far from the homes of William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg in New Jersey, currently teaches at Lynchburg College in Virginia.

Susan Maurer's work has appeared in over one hundred different journals and anthologies in ten countries, including Literary Imagaination, CrossConnect, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Orbis, Help Yourself!, Autonomedia, and Off the Cuffs. She has been nominated by three editors for a Pushcart Prize.

Corey Mesler is the owner of Burke’s Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals including Rattle, Pindeldyboz, Quick Fiction, Black Dirt, Thema, Mars Hill Review, Poet Lore and others. A short story of his was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best. Talk, his first novel, appeared in 2002.

Wes Mullen is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the First Place Winner of The College Alumni Society Poetry Prize 2004, which was judged by Christopher Buckley

Tahneer Oksman lives in Brooklyn. She recently completed a Masters in Humanities at the University of Chicago with a critical thesis on contemporary literature about depression. Her writing has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times.

Marissa Ranello-Vacheresse currently resides in Saskatchewan with her family. Her writing most recently appears in Dead Drunk Dublin, Unlikely Stories, Niederngasse, Comrades, Naked Poetry, Verse Libre Quarterly, and Thunder Sandwich.

Standard Schaefer does not yet have a bio.

Susan Schultz is a professor at the University of Hawaii where she has taught contemporary poetry, American literature, and creative writing. She has written two books of poetry, Aleatory Allegories, from Salt Press, Cambridge UK, and Memory Cards & Adoption Papers, from Potes and Poets, 2002. She is the founder and editor of Tinfish Press.

Keith Sharp studied photography at the University of the Arts, where he received a BFA in Photography and a MAT in Art Education. He has exhibited in solo shows at St. Joseph's University, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Arts Club of Washington, MUSE Gallery, and Zone One Gallery. His work was included in various group shows, both regionally and nationally in which he received many awards and prizes, including, Penn Charter Juried Art Show, Perkins Center for the Arts, Westmoreland Art Nationals, Three Rivers Arts Festival, James Madison University, Maryland Federation of Art, Toledo Friends of Photography, Delaware Art Museum, and the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts. Public and corporate collections include the Allentown Art Museum, Free Library of Philadelphia, Smithsonian American Art Museum, State Museum of Pennsylvania, West Collection at SEI Investments Company, and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. He is currently a fellow with The Center for Emerging Visual Artists.

Frank Sherlock is the author of XIII (Ixnay Press) and a collaboration with CAConrad entitled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems. He curates the La Tazza Reading Series & works with a food security organization in Center City.

Jennifer Snead received her PhD from Duke University in 2001, and was a 2002-2003 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published scholarly articles and reviews in The Age of Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Studies. Her poetry has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer. She is Director of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also teaches courses in literature and creative writing.

Barbara Tran's first poetry collection, In the Mynah Bird's Own Words, was a PEN Open Book Award finalist and the winner of Tupelo Press's chapbook competition. Barbara is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency and a Pushcart Prize.