Venise N. Battle is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a double major in English and Urban Poetry. She is credited with spearheading the initiative to develop a major in Urban Poetry at the University of Pennsylvania.

Herman Beavers is the author of Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson, which was published in 1995 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. He has also written the chap-book of poems, A Neighborhood of Feeling (1986) from Doris Publications. His poems have appeared in Black American Literature Forum, Whiskey Island, Rain, Cave Canem I and II, Dark Phrases, and the Cincinnati Poetry Review.

Lisa Dietrich earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from theUniversity of the Arts in Philadelphia where she studied painting andillustration. In 2005 she was awarded the Roger T. Hane Illustration prizefor outstanding artistic output. A former dancer, Lisa is very interestedin the recreation of movement through a visual medium and the dynamicqualities of different media. At the same time, she likes to work with theiconic conventions of religious art, as well as portraiture and decorativeillustration.

Tom Devaney is author of Letters to Ernesto Neto (Germ Folios, 2004), a collection of over thirty letters written to the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto. A Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania, Devaney is coordinator of the Kelly Writers House and produces the monthly radio show "Live," on 88.5 FM WXPN. In the summer 2004 he conducted a series of interactive tours of the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia called "The Empty House," for the Institute of Contemporary Art's show "The Big Nothing." To see his website, click here.

Leigh H. Edwards is an Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University and a Penn English Ph.D. She has published articles on popular culture and American literature in the journals Feminist Media Studies, Narrative, The Journal of Popular Culture and in edited collections from Duke University Press and McFarland Press. She is a contributing writer for PopMatters, a magazine of global culture published on-line at popmatters.com.

Will Esposito is an editor of the literature collectiveHinchas de Poesia (Homicidal Fans of Poetry) and a recipient of anAcademy of American Poets prize. He can be contacted at hinchas.de.poesia@gmail.com.

David Floyd is currently a visiting assistant professor of Englishat Saint Joseph's University. His poems and essays have most recentlyappeared in American Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Painted BrideQuarterly, and Philadelphia Stories. His book-length manuscriptThe Sudden Architecture of the Dark, in which these poems appear,was a finalist for the fourth annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.

Ish Klein is from Far Rockaway and was educated at Columbia University and the Iowa Writer's workshop. She's been published in Bridge, Gare du Nord, Explosive Magazine and online with the PhillySound edition of Mini-M.A.G. She's presently residing in Philadelphia and making comic and experimental movies.

Poet, translator & essayist Pierre Joris left Luxembourg at age 19 & has since lived in the U.S., Great Britain, North Africa, and France. Most recently, he is the author of Poasis: Selected Poems 1986– 1999 and a collection of essays entitled A Nomad Poetics (Wesleyan 2003). Since then he has published two chapbooks of poetry: Permanent Diaspora (Duration Press) and The Rothenberg Variations (Wild Honey Press, Ireland). Recent translations include 4x1: Work by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey, Habib Tengour and Abdelwahab Meddeb’s The Malady of Islam. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited the award-winning anthologies Poems for the Millennium and Pablo Picasso's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems (Exact Change). He received the 2005 Pen Award for Translation for Lightduress by Paul Celan (Green Integer) and recently published Paul Celan: Selections (University of California Press).

Brendan Lorber is the editor of LUNGFULL! magazine. He can be found in the secret laboratory of his Brooklyn farmhouse all night cooking up such chapbooks as The Address Book (1999), Your Secret (2001), Dash (2003) and, with Jen Robinson, Dictionary of Useful Phrases (2000). He's the cocreator, with Tracey McTague, of Book of the New Now (2002). In 2004 he delivered the Kerry Prize Talk at the Kelly Writers House.

Susan Maurer is the author of By the Blue Light of the Morning Glory,published by Linear Arts. She is currently published in Northeast Corridor, CrazyHorse and has work forthcoming in Gare du Nord, edited by Alice Notleyand Douglas Oliver.

Pamela Reitman lives in San Francisco. Her poetry, personal essays, and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Clackamas, Eureka Literary Magazine, Flyway, Licking River Review, LUMINA, Poet Lore, Porcupine, and Red Rock Review. “Shattered Glass” is excerpted from a novel-in-progress.

Anis Shivani's poetry, fiction, and nonfiction has appeared in MARGIE/The American Journal of Poetry, Barrow Street, LUNA, The Antioch Review, The Cream City Review, Quarter After Eight, New Orleans Review, The Dalhousie Review, Pleiades, AGNI, The South Carolina Review, and Southern Humanities Review. The first chapter of his novel, The Age of Critics, recently won the Nassau Review's annual fiction prize.

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.

Laura Solomon is the author of Bivouac (Slope Editions, 2002) and a newmanuscript entitled Blue and Red Things. Recent work has appeared in6X6, Gulf Coast, and How2, and a chapbook, Letters by which Sisters WillKnow Brothers, is forthcoming from Katalanche Press. Originally fromAlabama, she currently lives in western Massachusetts and will spend theupcoming year in Paris. She is a graduate of the program for Poets andWriters at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Ryan G. Van Cleave’s most recent books include a poetry collection, Imagine the Dawn: The Civil War Sonnets (Turning Point Press, 2005), and a creative writing textbook, Contemporary American Poetry: Behind the Scenes (Allyn & Bacon/Longman, 2003). He teaches creative writing and literature at Clemson University.

Divya Victor works and learns at Temple University, Philadelphia. Coincidentally, she also lives in Philadelphia. Her work appears in _ambit: journal of poetry and poetics, canwehaveourballback., and generator.

Niama Leslie Williams, doctoral candidate in African American Studies at Temple University, also possesses degrees in comparative literature and professional writing. Ms. Williams' work has appeared in Dark Eros, Spirit & Flame, Catch the Fire, Beyond the Frontier, Tattoo Highway #6, P.A.W. Prints, and most recently in Mischief, Caprice, and Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press).

Mark Wisniewski is the author of Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman (Hi Jinx Press, 1997), which was praised by The Los Angeles Times, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, The Austin Chronicle, and C Michael Curtis of The Atlantic Monthly. Wisniewski has won a Pushcart prize, and more than 100 of his stories have appeared in magazines such as New England Review, The Missouri Review, The Georgia Review, and others. He is finishing his second novel.