University of Pennsylvania Professor Herman Beavers did his doctoral work in American Studies at Yale University and received a Master's Degree in Afro-American Studies from Yale as well. He is a published poet, and completed an A.M. in Creative Writing from the Writing Program at Brown University. He has published a chapbook of poems entitled, A Neighborhood of Feeling (Doris Publications) and in May, Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Tom Bradley is a semi-regular contributor to Salon.com, Gadfly, and Exquiste Corpse. His latest fiction is in Pindelyboz, Big Bridge, Killing the Buddha, and Web Del Sol's Ethnic Anthology, and will be appearing in the next Oyster Boy. In addition, he is currently in New York's Poets and Writers Magazine, as well as being published in Creative Nonfiction, and London's Richmond Review and The Mighty Organ. He has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize, The Editor's Book Award, and was a finalist in The AWP Award Series in the Novel. More can be learned by visting his website, http://tombradley.org.

Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser went to Hampshire College & the MFAprogram at Warren Wilson College. Her fiction has appeared in variousjournals, including the Massachusetts Review, the Georgia Review &Story Quarterly. Her essays have appeared in a range of places,including the Southwest Review, Moxie, Mothering Magazine, BrainChild, Jewish Currents & Gadfly.

Mike Carey has written the comic book series Aquarius, published by Apocalypse Press in 1989, and Doctor Faustus, published by Caliber in 1997, among many others. He is best known for his comic epic Lucifer, currently published by Vertigo.

Tom Devaney is the American Pragmatist. He says, "I take practicalmeasures to do impractical things."

In recent years Bryan Dietrich has received the "Discovery"/The Nation Award, a Writers at Work Fellowship and the Eve of St. Agnes Prize. He has also been a five-time finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Series, a runner-up for the Walt Whitman Award, and was nominated for a Pushcart. His poetry has appeared in the Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Nation, Chelsea, Quarterly West, the Western Humanities Review and other journals.

Linh Dinh is the author of a collection of stories, "Fake House"(Seven Stories Press 2000), and three chapbooks of poems, "Drunkard Boxing"(Singing Horse 1998), "A Small Triumph Over Lassitude" (Leroy 2001), and"A Glass of Water" (Skanky Possum Press 2001). He is also the editor ofthe anthologies, "Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam" (SevenStories Press 1996), and "Three Vietnamese Poets" (Tinfish 2001). He is a long-time contributing editor to Xconnect.

Andrew Epstein is an Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he coordinated the F. W. Dupee Poetry Reading Series with Kenneth Koch. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Western Humanities Review, Notre Dame Review, North American Review, and Cafe Review, and his work has been nominated for a 2001 Pushcart Prize.

Richard Fein has been published in many web and print journals, including: Birmingham Poetry Review, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Mississippi Review, and Snakeskin.

David Floyd was born in Philadelphia and his poems and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review,CrossConnect, Heliotrope, Paragraph, and Quarter After Eight. He was a 2000 Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets fellowship recipient. Currently, he's an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, and is an assistant poetry editor for Black Warrior Review.

Johanna Fuhrman lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her book Freud in Brooklyn is published by Hanging Loose Press.

Chanda J. Glass lives and works in Medford New Jersey. Her work has appeared in El Ojito and New Mexico Living.

Laura Goldstein is a Masters student at Temple University and a longtime friend of the Kelly Writers House. She lives and works in Philadelphia.

Leonard Gontarek is the author of three books of poems: Zen For Beginners, Van Morrison Can't Find His Feet and St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, American Poetry Review, The Quarterly, American Writing, Mudfish, with work forthcoming in Field, Volt, Experimental Forest. He is a recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and is a contributing editor for American Poetry Review.

Bertha Greschak lives in New York City. Her work has appeared in Moria, RealPoetik, Aught, Poethia, and is forthcoming in Cauldron & Net.

Hoang Da Thi was born in 1978 in Hue, and now lives in Ho Chi Minh City. She is the author of the collection "Breast Bells" (1988), comprisedof poems spoken by her when she was between 3 and 5, and recorded by hermother, poet Lam Thi My Da.

Scot Kaylor received his BFA in Sculpture with honors in 1980 from Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY. He later attended the Rinehart Graduate School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, MD, where he received an MFA with honors in 1989. He has taught at the Art School in Kalamata, Greece, at Campus College of Arts and Sciences in Athens, Greece, and the Johnson Atelier and Technical Institute of Sculpture, in Mercerville, New Jersey. His work has been exhibited and commissioned internationally, and is represented in numerous private collections. Mr. Kaylor has been a Graduate Program Critic since beginning as a Lecturer at Penn in 1994. He teaches in and directs both the Undergraduate Sculpture program of the Department of Fine Arts, and the Digital Imaging program, which he established in 1995. Mr. Kaylor was appointed Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Computer Modeling in 1997.

Teresa Leo is a contributing editor for CrossConnect and The American Poetry Review. A poetry chapbook, Obscene Rhetoric, is forthcoming from Archangel Press (2002) and her work has recently appeared in The American Poetry Review's Philly Edition, New Orleans Review, La Petite Zine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Portable Boog Reader Philadelphia. She also received a 2001 literature fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Jeff McCall currently lives in Philadelphia. He lives with Sharon Male and a small kitten.

Louise Ostling is 26 and from Sweden. She is currentlyworking as a tennis coach and freelance journalist in El Paso. In December2002, Louise received an MFA from the University of Texas at El Paso. Her work has been published in BorderSenses.

Kimberly Townsend Palmer was born in Los Angeles in 1960, of Bohemian, English, French, German and Italian ancestry, and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She received a BS in Psychology in 1982 and a JD in 1985 from the University of Florida. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and two daughters. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared or will soon appear in The Adirondack Review, The Blue Fifth Review, Cenotaph, The Charlotte Poetry Review, CrossConnect, Earth's Daughters, Eclectica, Exquisite Corpse, Images InScript, New Laurel Review, The Panhandler, The Paumanok Review, Poetry.St Corner, Red River Review, Snake Nation Review, Snakeskin, Stark Raving Sanity, Stirring: A Literary Collection, and Xavier Review. She received an honorable mention in the North Carolina Writers' Network Thomas Wolfe Fiction Contest, judged by Barbara Kingsolver.

Elizabeth Scanlon is the associate editor of The American Poetry Review, and the recipient of a 2002 fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Abraham Smith was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and has lived in Texas, Scotland, and Spain. He was a featured performance artist at the 2000 South By Southwest Music and Film Festival and at the 2000 National Poetry Slam. His poems are forthcoming in New Orleans Review. He's currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama.

Erik Sweet was born, along with a much larger sister, in the winter of 1971. He spent the first quarter of his life in Buffalo, NY, and has fond memories of the endless snow, Talking Leaves bookstore, and the sight ofzooba pants and Bills banners on every corner. Now living in the capital of NY State, Erik teaches English and performs lawn wrestling gigs with his two cats, Sonar and Stega. He enjoys fresh waffles and day dreaming about trips to Lake Placid. His poems have been written and published in various journals and read aloud in a few places. He has been heckled before, but nothing has actually been thrown at him. Yet. He is the co-editor of Tool a Magazine, which has recently gone web and can be reached at http://www.toolamagazine.com.

Scott White received his Bachelor of Science degree from Skidmore College where he majored in Fine Arts. Mr. White then went to the University of Pennsylvania where he received a Masters of Fine Arts Degree with a concentration in Sculpture and is actively producing and exhibiting his own work. While teaching a 3D computer modeling/sculpture course at the University of Pennsylvania Mr. White also works as a Sculptor for Robert Engman Professor Emeritus (UPENN).