NATHALIE ANDERSON teaches English at Swarthmore College, and is a recipient of Pew Fellowship for poetry. Her poems have appeared in Cimmeron Review, Madison Review, Southern Poetry Review and Paris Review among others.

VICTOR CAR, born in Croatia in 1960, was briefly imprisoned under charges of being a "subversive Croatian nationalist and an intellectual." He travelled extensively in Europe, and the Balkan War found him working for the Ministry of Transportation. He and his family emigrated to Canada in 1992. The experiences and tales of lost homeland and friends drove Victor to begin writing again, though at first he was "hesitant and uncertain" in the English language. He is currently preparing a collection of reminiscences, "fact based fictions." Lifebag is Victor's first published story in English.

ALEX EDELMAN attends the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently pursuing an undergraduate English Literature degree. He is chief student technology officer for Penn's Writers House. In his spare time, he makes WWW homepages for exorbitant rates.

CLAYTON ESHLEMAN'S latest collection of poems, his eleventh, is Under World Arrest (Black Sparrow). In 1981, he founded the influential magazine Sulfur, now in its 37th issue. He is also a noted translator/co-translator of Cesar Vallejo, Aime Cesare, Antonin Artaud and Vladimir Holan, among others. He has received a National Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and several fellowships in poetry in translation from the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

DOUG FINE is a 25-year-old writer and journalist who reports for the likes of the Washington Post, the Discovery Channel Online, Wired, Spin, and the Village Voice from Rwanda, Uganda, Laos, Burma, Suriname, Ecuador, Alaska and cyberspace. It's hard (and dangerous) to say where he lives, but he has a creative writing degree from Stanford and his fiction has appeared in the journal Beneath the Surface. His Web Site (http://www.well.com/user/fine), which contains his reporting, photos and fiction including an excerpt of his just finished novel Sugar Bowl Game, was awarded Netscape's Cool Site of the Day. He's getting into screenwriting now, too.

H.E. FRANCIS divides his time between Huntsville, Alabama and Madrid, Spain. A former teacher and the founding editor of Poem, his short stories and translations are widely published throughout the United States, Spain and Argentina. His short fiction has won numerous awards, as well as being anthologized in the O. Henry Awards, Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short Stories, and other volumes. His latest collection, The Sudden Trees is scheduled for publication this year by Beil Press.

CHARLES GHIGNA is a poet, children's author, and nationally syndicated writer of the humorous newspaper feature Snickers. His books for Walt Disney's Hyperion Books include Tickle Day: Poems from Father Goose, Riddle Rhymes, and Good Cats Bad Cats, Good Dogs Bad Dogs. His book of poems Returning to Earth was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Speaking In Tongues: New and Selected Poems 1974-1994 received critical acclaim. Ghigna's poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McCall's and numerous other magazines.

KAREN GIBSON recieved her BFA from Edinboro University. She has exhibited in New York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh. She has taught Workshops at Bryn Mawr, Manayunk, Havertown and elsewhere. She is presently at work on her Master's at University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

MAJOR JACKSON is a PEW Fellowship Recipient for Poetry, on the staff of Painted Bride Quarterly, a contributing writer/columnist for City Paper. His poetry has recently appeared in Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of African American Poetry (Syracuse University Press, 96). These poems are from a developing manuscript, Urban Renewal.

MAREK LUGOWSKI is a contributing editor of CrossConnect. He is also the editor of Agnieszka's Dowry and A SMALL GARLIC PRESS. Marek is a regular featured poet in CrossConnect.

ROBERT MCDUFF won awards from The Southern Literary Festival, and The Alabama State Poetry Society. His poems have appeared in The Alternate, The Altered State, Astarte, Aura, Birmingham Poetry Review, Elk River Review, Esc!, and the James River Review among others.

MICHAEL MCNEILLEY is the editor of Olympia Review, ZeroCity and The Hawk. His fiction has been published in Kaleidoscope, DAM, Plazm, Kumquat Meringue, Fritz, Pirate Writings, Sunflower and elsewhere. His Poetry has been published in Chicago Review, Cream City Review, Mississippi Review and elsewhere. His old house in Olympia Washington has a large cherrytree stump in the backyard, where the spirit of his dead brother sits on clear nights, the ghost of a baby possum on his shoulder, and paints an undercoating of moonlight on clouds high across the Sound. Michael is a regular contributor to CrossConnect.

HELEN NORRIS has published three novels, three collections of short stories, twice received the Andrew Lytle Prize for fiction, and her work appeared in three O. Henry Prize anthologies. Her collection The Christmas Wife received a PEN/Faulkner Award nomination, and the title story, filmed by HBO, starring Jason Robards and Julie Harris, has become a seasonal classic. HBO is presently making a film from her short story The Cracker Man. Her first book of poems, Whatever Is Round was published in 1994 by Curbow Publications.

GEORGETTE PERRY'S, poems have appeared in Poem, Southern Humanities Review, Earth First, Green Fuse, and are forthcoming in Classical Outlook and The Unitarian Universalist Poets anthology. Georgette is also the editor/publisher of Catamount Press.

NORBERTO LUIS ROMERO, born in Argentina, is now a citizen of Spain. He was the winner of the first Noega Award for Short Fiction from Asturias, Spain, for his book of stories Transgresiones. His book The Arrival of Autumn in Constantinople is scheduled for November publication by Sun & Moon Press. His stories have been published in Canada, the United States, Argentina, and France.

JUDITH SCHAECHTER is the recipient of two National Endowments for the Arts and a Pew Fellowship among others. Her artwork has appeared on the cover of New Yorker among others along with book covers and record albums. Her work has been exhibited in showings in New York, Los Angeles and most recently at Philadelphia's ICA gallery. She currently teaches at the University of the Arts.

BARRY SPACKS is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently: BRIEF SPARROW, (L.A. press Illuminati), and SPACKS STREET: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, (Johns Hopkins). He was the founding editor of The Pennsylvania Literary Review, an N.E.A. librettist grantee and recipient of Commonwealth Club of California's Poetry Medal.

RAINA VON WALDENBURG is a contributing editor of CrossConnect, a performance poet, a director and an actor. She is currently directing a Sandra Shullman play in New York City. She will be performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe the last two weeks of September 96. She teaches acting at NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing.

SHAWN LYNN WALKER was born in Honolulu, HI. Since then, she has been published in various small journals, such as The Creative Woman, Amherst Review, Antietam Review and elsewhere.

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