Dinu Adam is among Romania's most unusual poets of his generation, a kind of anomalous figure in that he chose to remain silent under communism and, after 1977, put only some translations into print. His first volume, The High Gates, came out in 1974, and his second, Lullaby, two years later; he appeared in most of his country's notable literary magazines and won a number of literary prizes before he stopped publishing. Currently he is managing editor of Romania's leading satirical weekly, Academia Catavencu.

Christine Baines lives in Arizona, Armenia and London. Recent publications include Messages From the Heart (USA), The Yerevan Literary Journal (Armenia) and YILTP (England). She also writes book reviews and teaches journal writing and life writing - both in England and the USA. Her book on journal writing, Inner Horizons is to be published in 1998.

Lisa Borders is the recipient of a 1995 fellowship in fiction from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her work has appeared in such journals as Iowa Woman, Black Warrior Review, Snake Nation Review, Agassiz Review and Painted Bride Quarterly. "The Day Prairie Rose, Texas Disappeard From the Map" is an excerpt from a novel in progress and the winner of the 1996 Open Voice Fiction Award from the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in New York.

David Breskin has work which recently appeared, or are shortly forthcoming, in The New Yorker, New American Writing, DoubleTake, TriQuarterly and Boulevard. Additionally, this spring Fresh Kills was nominated for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award in Poetry.

Marcus Cafagña's first book, The Broken World, was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the National Poetry Series and published by University of Illinois Press in 1996. He has poems published in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, and forthcoming from The Southern Review, DoubleTake, and The Threepenny Review.

Christopher Chambers is the editor of Black Warrior Review. His work has recently appeared in Quarterly West, and is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly.

Anthony W. DeAnnuntis has published fiction in such sources as North Atlantic Review, California Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Poetic Space, and Luna Negra, among others. He is a graduate of Community College of Philadelphia where he teaches in the English Department.

Robert Klein Engler is a regular contributor to CrossConnect. His books of poetry, Shoreline and Medicine Signs, are published by Alphabeta Press. He was the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards for his poem "Three Poems for Kabbalah," which appeared in Fish Stories Collective 2.

Debra Hoffman works and lives in Philadelphia.

Pablo García Casado (Córdoba, 1972) has participated in the creation of various literary magazines, including Reverso and Recuento, and his poems have appeared in such journals as Pliegos de la Posada, Navalá and Lúnula. His first book of poetry, Las Afueras (The Outskirts), was published in 1997.

Saku Gunasegaram's artwork was featured in Xconnect Issue #8's Art Gallery. Her piece "Cirrus Carcinoma" is on this Issue's Features Page.

Eli Goldblatt directs the University Writing Program and teaches at Temple University. His work has appeared most recently in Hambone, Paper Air, Another Chicago Magazine, Madison Review, Louisiana Literature, Prosodia and 6ix. Forthcoming in 1998 is a new collection of poems, Speech Acts (Chax Press).

Rebekah Grossman has published poems in the Antioch Review, Boulevard, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Confrontation among others. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania where she is a Phd. student in Folklore and Folklife.

Karmelo C. Iribarren (San Sebastián, 1959) made his literary debut with the chapbook Bares y Noches (1993). La condición urbana (1995) was his first full-length book of poetry. His upcoming book Serie B, is due out shortly.

Halvard Johnson is a regular contributor to CrossConnect. He is the author of 5 volumes of Poetry. 4 were published by New Rivers Press and the fifth, Americans Playing Slow-pitch Softball at an Airbase near Kunsan, South Korea is currently seeking a publisher. Eclipse is archived on-line at CAPA. Poems have appeared on-line in Deep Breath and RealPoetik and fiction in Blue Penny Quarterly.

Yusef Komunyakaa received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award for Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems. He is the author of ten books, including Magic City (1992), Dien Cai Dau (1988), I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (1986), and Copacetic (1984). He also co-edited The Jazz Poetry Anthology (with J.A. Sascha Feinstein, 1991). His awards include the Thomas Forcade Award (1991), the William Faulkner Prize from the University of Rennes in France (1994), the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine (1997), and the Hanes Poetry Prize (1997). His new book, Thieves of Paradise, was just published by Wesleyan University Press. He is professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.

Thomas LeClair teaches at the University of Cincinnati. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Fiction International and Witness. His novel, Passing Off, was published by Permanent Press in 1996. He is also the author of two critical books; In the Loop and The Art of Excess.

Michael Magee is a contributing editor for CrossConnect. He lives in Rhode Island and is finishing his Phd. dissertation on Emerson and American experimental writing, in English at the University of Pennsylvania. His poetry has appeared or forthcoming in The Florida Review, America, Spoon River Poetry Review, Amelia, Crazy Quilt Quarterly and elsewhere.

John McCalla is a freelance writer who lives and works in Philadelphia. His work has been published in many sources, including the New York Times and the Philadelphia City Paper. He authors a weekly column in the Philadelphia Daily News.

Kate Moran lives and works in Philadephia where her show "Vitreous Humours" recently appeared at the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy Of The Fine Arts.

Dennis Must is the editor/founder of Flying Horse. He has had several of his plays performed Off Off Broadway, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sun Dog - The Southeast Review, The Washington Square Review, Java Snob Review and Red Hen Press' 1998 New American Short Fiction anthology, among others.

Deirdre O'Connor teaches in The Writing Center at Bucknell University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Thirteenth Moon, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly among others.

Toby Olson has published several books of poetry, the most recent of which are We Are the Fire (New Directions) and Unfinished Building (Coffee House Press), and 6 novels including The Life of Jesus and Seaview (New Directions); The Woman Who Escaped from Shame (Random House); and Utah, Dorit in Lesbos, and At Sea (Simon & Schuster). He has received NEA, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, and numerous awards including the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is a Professor of English at Temple University.

Mark Ostrowski lives in Spain, where he works as a freelance writer and translator. Some poems from his first collection, Favelas Untold, have appeared in The Cortland Review and The Salt River Review. Ostrowski is a regular contributor to the Spanish cultural magazine, Antorcha.

Ed Pavlic is a professor of English at Union College in Schenectady, NY. Among the magazines in which his creative and critical work has appeared are African American Review, Screen Noir and Black Camera. His Essay on David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident won the 1996 Darwin Turner Award for the year's best piece of criticism devoted to African-American writing.

C.C. Russell's work has appeared in or forthcoming from Oyster Boy Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, Hiram poetry Review, Pearl, and Agnieszka's Dowry.

Jeffrey L. Schneider teaches English composition, literature and creative writing at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, NY. His work has recently appeared in Porcupine, The Onion River Review, Studies in Contemporary Satire, Snake Nation Review and Whiskey Island Magazine.

Paul C. Sherr, Ph.D., is a retired professor of English at Rider University and the author of The Short Story and the Oral Tradition. A veteran bassoonist and clarinetist of musical theater orchestras in New York, he can currently be heard playing jazz clarinet at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, PA.

Adam Sorkin has published his collaborative translations in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Sulfur and The Literary Review. His fifth book, The Sky Behind the Forest, a selection of Liliana Ursu's poetry in a three-way collaboration with both Ursu and Tess Gallagher, was published by Bloodaxe Books last January; it was a British Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. His anthology of 16 contemporary Romanian prose poets, Speaking the Silence, edited and translated with Bogdan Stefanesca, is due out later this year from Prose Poem Press.

Robert Sward, the recipient of a Guggenheim Award and a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award, currently teaches at the University of California in Santa Cruz. He is the author of 16 books, including Uncivilizing (Insomniac Press, Canada), A Much-Married Man, A Novel, and Four Incarnations, New & Selected Poems (Coffee House Press). He is a contributing Editor to Blue Moon Review and Pares cum Paribus.

Amber Dorko Stopper has received two Pushcart nominations for short fiction and is the recipient of a 1993 Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Fellowship. Her work has appeared in such journals as Two Girls Review, Northwest Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and American Writing.

James Tate won the 1995 Tanning Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His Selected Poems received the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and his collection Worshipful Company of Fletchers won the 1994 National Book Award. He is on the permanent faculty at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

William F. Van Wert is the author of several recent books: Memory Links (essays, University of Georgia Press, 1995, winner of the AWP Creative Nonfiction Competition); What's It All About (novel, Simon & Schuster, 1996); Stool Wives (novel, Plover Press, 1996); Don Quickshot (novel in verse, Livingston University Press, 1997); The Invention of Ice Skating (poetry, Avison Press, 1997); Proper Myth (poetry, Orchises Press, 1998); Vital Signs (poetry, Urthona Press, 1998, winner of the William Blake Award); and The Advancement of Ignorance (short stories, Bookmark Press, forthcoming). He teaches Film and Creative Writing at Temple University.

Mark Wisniewski is the author of a novel, Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman (High Jinx Press. Over seventy of his short stories are published or forthcoming in magazines such as The Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, American Short Fiction, Nexus, California Quarterly and Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. He is the Fiction Editor of New York Stories.

Roger Wolfe (Kent, 1962) was born in England, he has lived in Spain since the age of four. He has published the following books of poems: Diecisiete poemas (1986), Días perdidos en los transportes públicos (1992), Hablando de pintura con un ciego (1993), Arde Babilonia (1994) and Mensajes en botellas rotas (1996). His next book of poetry, Cinco años de cama,together with a volume of selected poems tentatively called Noches de blanco papel, will be published later this year.