Jon Ballard is a poet as well as an occasional literature instructor for Oakland Community College in Royal Oak, Michigan.  Currently he lives in Mexico City, Mexico.  His poems have previously appeared in Soundings East, Riverrun,The Old Red Kimono, SP Quill, The MacGuffin,The Dande Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, Poetry Midwest, and The Centrifugal Eye. His work is forthcoming in The Rock Salt Plum Review, Subtletea, and The Valparaiso Poetry Review.  His first chapbook, Lonesome, from Pudding House Publications, is due out this year.

Virginia Bell's poem "No Pope" appeared in the Spring 2006 Wartime issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly.  On March 6, 2007, she was a featured reader in the Takoma DC library Poetry Series. She has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and frequently teaches as an adjunct professor with the English Department at Georgetown University. She  has published scholarly articles on such writers as Eduardo Galeano and Leslie Marmon Silko.  She also is a stay-at-home parent of two young children.  She lives in Takoma Park.

Bruce Bennett is the author of seven books of poetry and twenty poetry chapbooks. His most recent books are Funny Signals (FootHills Publishing, 2003), a collection of political poems and fables, and The Deserted Campus (Clandestine Press, 2003), satirical poems about college life with illustrations by David Grossvogel. His most recent chapbooks are Coyote′s Interlude with Little Miss Darling (FootHills, 2006) and Examined Life (Scienter, 2006). His New and Selected Poems, Navigating The Distances (Orchises Press), was chosen by Booklist as "One Of The Top Ten Poetry Books Of 1999." Bennett co-founded and served as an editor of two poetry magazines, Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, and Ploughshares, and, during the 1980's and 90's, served as an Associate Editor for State Street Press. He has reviewed contemporary poetry books in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Harvard Review, and elsewhere, and his poems have appeared widely in literary journals, as well as numerous textbooks and anthologies. Volume XXX of Paintbrush, entitled "The World of Bruce Bennett," was devoted to his work. He teaches literature and creative writing at Wells College, where he is Professor and Chair of English and Director of Creative Writing.

Sarah Bonifacio graduated from Drew University in May 2006, earning a B.A. in English and Classics.  While at Drew, she edited the student-run literary magazine, Insanity's Horse, in 2004-05, and was awarded the Robert Chapman Prize for Poetry.  Currently preparing herself for graduate  school, she works at a law firm in Manhattan, and is "writing poems always."

Jared Carter's fourth book of poems, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, was published in 2006 by Wind Publications in Kentucky.  A Midwesterner from Indiana, he has published poems in such literary journals as Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry, TriQuarterly, and a number of online journals.

John Thomas Clark's poems arise from his education at Fordham University, CCNY, and Queens College and an adulthood which has had to come to terms with a neuro-muscular disease (Progressive Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Type Three). Other poems drawn from this source have been published in The Recorder--Journal of the American-Irish Society, Mediphors, and Celtic Fringe. Still others have flowed into Othering, an unpublished mss which addresses the life of a person who becomes “an other” as he faces a burgeoning bodily breakdown because of physical disability. "Poetry Afficionado" is one of sixty-seven sonnets and a crown in his recently completed light-hearted romp called The Joy of Lex, the story of his life with Lex, "the best service dog in the world."

Claire Crabtree teaches American and Irish literature at University of Detroit Mercy and heads the Creative Writing Program. In addition to scholarly publications on Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and other writers, she has published poems in such publications as America, Passages North, VIA, Crosscurrents, Dan River Anthology, and Moving Out. In 1994-5 she served as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Timisoara, Romania. She lives in the city of Detroit with her spouse.

Yoko Danno was born, raised, and educated in Japan.  A graduate of Kobe College, she has been writing poetry solely in English for more than 40 years.  In addition to being a poet, she is also a translator and the editor of the Ikuta Press in Kobe, Japan.  Her poetry has been published in various journals, anthologies, and magazines in the US, Canada, and Japan, and she is the author of four books of poetry, including Epitaph for Memories, published in 2002 by the Bunny and Crocodile Press.  Her fifth book of poetry, a jointly-written poetic experiment with the American poet James C. Hopkins, entitled The Blue Door, was published in July of 2006 by the Word Works press in Washington, DC.

Anthony DiMatteo, professor of English at the New York Institute of Technology, is the author of many articles on early modern poetry as well as the first translation into English of Natale Conti’s Mythologiae, a work on Greek and Roman myth that influenced Spenser, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Paolo Veronese and Milton.  He has received numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the New York Council for the Humanities.  His poetry has been recently published by Exquisite Corpse and Penumbra.

Robert Farnsworth's two collections of poems, Three Or Four Hills And  A Cloud and Honest Water, were published by Wesleyan University Press.  Recent poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Antioch Review, Smiths Knoll (U.K.), Malahat Review (Canada), Triquarterly, and Ploughshares.  His work has won a PEN Discovery Award (2005), and for seven weeks this past summer, he was the resident poet at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH.

Co-editor of Ekphrasis, Carol Frith has work in Willow Review, Switched-on Gutenberg, Quarter After Eight, Chariton, Cutbank, Redivider, Asheville, & others.  She has chapbooks from Bacchae Press, Medicinal Purposes, and Palanquin Press & a poem of hers received Special Mention in the 2003 Pushcart Anthology.

Martin Galvin's most recent book, a chapbook from Finishing Line Press, will be out in June.  He has had poems in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The New Republic, JAMA, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Midwest Review, OntheBus, and many others, including several earlier issues of Innisfree. His book Wild Card won the Columbia Award (1989) judged by Howard Nemerov.

Jen Garfield was born in a suburb of Chicago and received an undergraduate degree in creative writing from The University of Wisconsin.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Karamu, The Wisconsin Academy Review of Sciences, Arts and Letters, Poetry Midwest (online) and Spout Magazine.  Her poems have also placed in The University of Wisconsin's George B. Hill Poetry Contest, The Illinois State Poetry Society Annual Contest, and The League of Minnesota Poet's Annual Contest.  She currently lives in Somerville, MA.

Do Gentry has had poems published in Sulphur River Literary Review, Ekphrasis, Fourteen Hills, Rhino, Spoon River Poetry Review, and elsewhere.  The Nightmare Parable was the winner of the 2004 Permafrost chapbook competition.  She lives in Sacramento, California.

John Grey's latest book is What Else Is There from Main Street Rag. His work has been published recently in Agni, Hubbub, South Carolina Review and The Journal Of The American Medical Association.

Poet and teacher JoAnne Growney recently moved from Pennsylvania to Silver Spring, Maryland.  She has read her work at the Miller Cabin in Rock Creek Park and in the Nora School reading series.  Her poetry appears in DC-area journals, including Divided City and Innisfree;  in April 2006, Paper Kite Press published her collection, My Dance is Mathematics.  JoAnne loves and has taught both writing and mathematics.  In Silver Spring, she offers poetry workshops at the Eastern Avenue Drop-In Center and works with Heliport Gallery to coordinate poetry events with gallery exhibits.  Samples of her collaborative work (art-poetry, math-poetry, Romanian poetry, and so on) are available at her website, http://joannegrowney.com.

Kirsten Hampton lives by the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia.  She received her BA in English from Cornell University, with a concentration in poetry.  She is working on a poetry manuscript, The Growing Collection, and has previously published in professional, consumer, and poetry journals.

Sherry Horowitz is a graphic artist, a mother of four and resides in Rockland County, New York. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at New England College.

Reamy Jansen teaches at Rockland Community College. He is a Contributing Editor to the Bloomsbury Review of Books. Recent essays and poems have appeared in Alimentum, The Literature of Food, 32Poems, Gargoyle, and Gihon River Review, among others.

Brian Katz has been a creative writing teacher at several universities, including Hofstra and, most recently, the College of St. Rose.  He's  written a book on Eastern mythology and formerly served as prose editor at Big City Lit.  Recent publications range from a story in Hayden's Ferry Review to poetry in Red Rock Review.

"Water Strider Man," is from Jesse Keegan's developing collection titled, Flame Unfolding.  He lives in Bergen County, N.J.

Mary Ann Larkin’s book of poems, The Coil of the Skin, was published by Washington Writers Publishing House.  She is also the author of four chapbooks:  White Clapboard; The DNA of the Heart (with her husband Patric Pepper) by Pond Road Press; A Shimmering That Goes With Us from Finishing Line Press; and most recently, gods & flesh from Plan B Press in 2007. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Greece, Poetry Ireland Review, New Letters and other magazines and in more than twenty local and national anthologies, including America in Poetry and Ireland in Poetry, the art and poetry series published by Harry N. Abrams.  In 2003 she and her husband founded Pond Road Press, which published its third book, Tough Heaven:  Poems of Pittsburgh by Jack Gilbert, in 2006.  She has taught writing and literature at a number of colleges and universities, most recently at Howard University in Washington DC.  She has written about literary issues for Foundation News and National Public Radio and worked as a fundraiser for The Watershed Foundation, Africare, and other nonprofits.  She comes from Pittsburgh and now lives in Washington, DC, and Truro, Massachusetts.

Nancy Tupper Ling is the Grand Prize winner for the Writer’s Digest annual competition. She has also won several awards for her poetry and children's stories, including those awarded by the Pacific Northwest Writer's Association, the Alabama Writer's Conclave, and the Decatur Public Library. Her work as appeared in Louisville Review, Potomac Review, Reverb, Mid-American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

Gregory Luce was born in Dallas, Texas in 1954. He grew up in Texas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma, receiving a BA in English and an MA in Creative Writing from Oklahoma State University. Following additional graduate work in writing at the University of Southern Mississippi, he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1980. For twenty-three years he has been employed by the National Geographic Society in the Pre-Press Division where he is currently Production Manager for National Geographic Magazine. He has published poems in Kudzu, Kansas Quarterly, New Laurel Review, Rikka (Canada), Iron (UK), Ochlockonee Review, Cimarron Review, Shades of Gray, Dancing Shadows Review, and Link.  The father of two sons, he currently resides in Washington's Mt. Pleasant neighborhood.

Pete Mackey is the author of Chaos Theory and James Joyce’s Everyman (University Press of Florida), has written for numerous university presidents and other higher education leaders in America and Ireland, and now lives and works in central Pennsylvania.

Larry Moffi is the author of three collections of poems, most recently A Citizen's Handbook, and three nonfiction books on baseball, The Conscience of the Game: Baseball's Commissioners from Landis to Selig; This Side of Cooperstown: An Oral History of Major League Baseball in the 1950s; and Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947–1959. His poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry, The Ohio Review, TriQuarterly, The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, and California Quarterly.

Judy Neri has placed in The Formalist and Passager contests and had poems in The Classical Outlook, The Lyric, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is seeking a publisher for her first book.

Shep Ranbom lives in Washington, DC, and has just completed a collection of poems called The Infinity of Small Places from which these pieces are drawn. Recently published work includes poems in tribute to the late Irish novelist John McGahern, which appear in Leitrim Guardian 2007, and selections from “King Philip’s War,” appearing in Independent Scholar. He is the founder and president of CommunicationWorks, LLC, a national public affairs firm focused on education, social policy, and cultural issues. 

Cynthia Nitz Ris teaches English at University of Cincinnati and works as a freelance writer and editor.  She was co-founder and editor of the local literary journal The Blue Writer.  Her most recent poems appeared in Snakeskin and Identity Theory.

Lori Romero currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  She is co-founder of Cezanne’s Carrot (www.cezannescarrot.org).  Ms. Romero’s chapbook, Wall to Wall, was published by Finishing Line Press.  Her short story, "Strange Saints," was a semifinalist in the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award and her short screenplay won the Manhattan Short Film Festival’s Scripts and Screenplay Competition.  Her poetry and fiction have been published in more than sixty journals and anthologies, which include Copper Nickel, flashquake, Citizen 32, Quercus Review, Plum Biscuit, Mystic River Review, Edgar Literary Magazine, Poetry Motel, Mobius, Pebble Lake Review, and Mindprints.  She was just nominated for a second Pushcart Prize.

Janice D. Soderling was born in the United States but lives in Sweden.  Her poetry and fiction has appeared one or more times in literary magazines of seven countries, among them: Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, Bottomfish, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Old Red Kimono, Tar River Poetry (U.S); The Malahat Review, Event, Fiddlehead, University of Windsor Review (Canada); Acumen, Staple New Writing, Other Poetry (England). Her poems were selected for the 1986-87 and the 1997 editions of Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry. A story was awarded first prize in the Glimmer Train very short fiction competition (summer 2006).

Sandra Staas grew up in Scotland before moving to Spain where she resided for many years. She now lives in Pittsburgh.   Her work has been published in several small literary magazines, including The Pittsburgh Quarterly and New Hope International.

Paul Kareem Tayyar's poems and stories have been published in a variety of journals, including Ibbetson St., The Santa Monica Review, Into the Teeth of the Wind, and HazMat Review.  He is currently an English Lecturer at Golden West College, and is working on his Ph.D. in American Literature at U.C. Riverside.

Naomi Thiers has published poetry and fiction in many magazines. She published a book of poetry, Only the Raw Hands Are Heaven, with Washington Writers' Publishing House in 1992. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her daughter.

Jean Tupper's work has been published or will appear in Bayou, Carquinez Review, Confluence, The Larcom Review, The Madison Review, The MacGuffin, The Nebraska Review, New Delta Review,Oregon East, The Paterson Literary Review, RE:AL, Rio Grande Review, Thema, Blue Unicorn,The Distillery, Eclipse, Eureka Literary Magazine, Inkwell, Slipstream, Snake Nation Review, Solo, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Poetry Review, Westview, West Wind Review, Wisconsin Review,Worcester Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere.

R.J. Van Zandt is a former Criminal Investigator/Deputy Commissioner and teacher of poetry who has spent many a grand time in Ireland enjoying Celtic wit and Irish eccentricity.

Sharlie West has attended the writing programs at George Washington University, Clarion University, and at The Writer's Center in Bethesda,  MD,  where she studied with Rod Jellema and Rose Solari.  Her poems have appeared in Gargoyle, The Baltimore Review, Wordwrights!, Bogg, California Quarterly, Minimus, Pacific Coast Journal, and many others.  Online publications include 100 Poets Against the War and Times New Roman (Nth Position). Chapbooks include House of Bones, Sea Born, Bayou Moon and On the Avenue (Shadows Ink Publications).  She has also published short stories and a novel, Maybe Tomorrow (Dorchester Press).

Barbara M. White has been a featured reader in the poetry series at the Takoma Park (D.C.) Library. Her publication credits include an op-ed in The Washington Post, articles in Moment and the Washington Jewish Week, and children’s stories in World Over.

Kathi Wolfe’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Potomac Review, Not Just Air, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, raggededgemagazine.com, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Kaleidoscope, and Breath&Shadow.  In 2004 and 2006, Wolfe received a writer’s grant from Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT.  She has read at many Washington, D.C., area poetry series, including the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon series.  In 2006, Wolfe received a Puffin Foundation grant for her work on a chapbook of poems on Helen Keller, and in 2007 she will be featured on the radio show “The Poet and The Poem.”

Ernie Wormwood has been published in The Antietam Review, Rhino, Perpetuum Mobile, Main Channel Voices, the new Creation Journal and at Raintiger and Poetrybay online.   New work will be appearing at Hotmetal Press online. She was recently featured in Grace Cavalieri's The Poet and the Poem broadcast for the Library of Congress.   She is grateful to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and Southampton Writer's Conference for artistic support.  A Washington, D.C., native, Ernie lives in Leonardtown, Maryland.

Katherine E. Young's poetry is forthcoming in Archipelago, Poet Lore, and Stone Table Review.  Her work has appeared most recently in The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Iowa Review (where she is a three-time finalist for the Iowa Award), Southern Poetry Review, and Shenandoah.  She is a three-time semifinalist for the "Discovery/The Nation" reading in New York and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Locally, she co-hosts the Cafe Muse reading series in Friendship Heights, MD, and is a visiting poet in the Arlington County, VA, schools.  A chapbook, Gentling the Bones, will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2007.