E. Louise Beach
Dr. Beach is a teacher of languages and literature. Her first chapbook of poems, Blue Skies, will be published by Finishing Line Press in December 2006. Her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Big City Lit, The Bitter Oleander, descant, Ellipsis, Poem, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Wisconsin Review, and elsewhere.

Anne Becker

Anne Becker's poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Southern Poetry Review, Washington Jewish Week, Gargoyle, Washington Review, and elsewhere. She earned an M.A. from the Writing Seminars, Johns Hopkins University. She won the Maryland Heritage Poetry Award in 1984 and has received a Fellowship in Poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council. Her collection, The Transmutation Notebooks: Poems in the Voices of Charles and Emma Darwin (Forest Woods Media, 1996) was completed with a MSAC work-in-progress grant. Ms. Becker serves in the Maryland Poets-in-the-Schools program, teaches creative writing at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, provides poetry tutorials, and conducts a special poetry workshop, Writing the Body, for those who have experience with life-threatening or chronic illness. Following her interest in teaching across disciplines, she has presented a workshop at the Corcoran School of Art on the use of language for the visual artist, read and lectured at the University of Connecticut for a course on the nature of scientific thought and at the Corcoran for classes on the history of science and technology. For many years, she served as Senior Producer of Watershed Tapes, which include those of poets such as Ruth Stone, William Carlos Williams, Jean Valentine, Czeslaw Milosz, and Joseph Brodsky.

Brad Bisio
Brad Bisio was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but now lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and five-year-old daughter. He received his BA in English with an emphasis in creative writing from Humboldt State University. Currently, he is working on his poetry manuscript, Mind Chatter and a novel entitled, Still No One, but Returning Different. He published the first chapter of the novel in Toyon, and won the Advisor's Award for the highest ranked piece of fiction. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Toyon, Penumbra and The Pittsburgh Free Press.

Jane Blue
Jane Blue was born and raised in Berkeley, California. Her poems have been published in the e-zines Avatar Review, Blaze and Stirring, and in The Chattahoochee Review, Poetry International, Antigonish, The Louisville Review and Spoon River Poetry Review, among others. She has taught creative writing at women's centers, colleges and prisons, and privately. She has two books of poetry, The Persistence of Vision, Poet's Corner Press, Stockton CA 2003 and Now that I am in the Light I See, Konocti Books, Winters CA 1996
John Bush
John Bush's poems have appeared in 2River View, Story South, The Paumanok Review, Del Sol Review, Thunder Sandwich, and elsewhere. His interviews with Peter Elbow, Billy Collins, and Lee Odell appear in Critique Magazine and at WoW Net.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in Texas with her husband, David. She has published one full-length book of poetry, Reading Berryman to the Dog, and one poetry chapbook, After Happily Ever After. Her poems appear in The Poet's Grimm, Is This Forever, or What? Poems and Paintings from Texas, and most recently Story South, SouthLit, Windhover, and Fringe.
Grace Cavalieri
Grace Cavalieri is the author of 14 books of poetry and 20 staged plays. She's produced "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio, which will enter its 30th year in 2007, now from the Library of Congress. Grace holds the Allen Ginsberg Award for Poetry, the Pen Fiction Award for story, and the CPB Silver Medal for Broadcasting.
Norma Chapman
Norma Chapman lives in Brunswick, a small town in Western Maryland. She started writing poetry after turning sixty, somewhat to her surprise. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from River Styx, Passager, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Iris, and The Sow's Ear. She received a 2003 Maryland State Arts Council Grant.

James Cihlar
James Cihlar's work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The James White Review, Water~Stone Review, Bloom, Briar Cliff Review, and online at Sunspinner and Kaleidowhirl. He's won a Minnesota State Arts Board grant in Poetry and been a finalist for the Gertrude Press Chapbook Award and the Blue Light Press Book Award. Cihlar has a first collection of poems titled Undoing, forthcoming from Little Pear Press in 2008. His work is included in the Little Pear Press anthology, Regrets Only (http://littlepearpress.com).

Ellen Aronofsky Cole
Ellen Aronofsky Cole teaches creative writing and drama workshops at
elementary schools throughout the area, at the Writer's Center in Bethesda,
Maryland, at Round House Theater in Silver Spring, and at the Black Rock Center for the Arts in Germantown, Maryland. She is an actress and a puppeteer with the Kids on the Block Puppet Troupe. She has been a featured poet at the poetry reading series at the Takoma Park Library in Washington, DC, and at the Nora School poetry series in Silver Spring. Ellen has received four grants from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery. She has a MA in Drama from Catholic University and is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Ellen has been published in Ladybug, Babybug, and Crayola Kids magazines, and in the Potomac Review.

Ruth Z. Deming
Ruth Z. Deming, MGPGP, is a psychotherapist and the executive director of New Directions Support Group, Inc., (www.NewDirectionsSupport.org) for people with depression and bipolar disorder and for their families out of suburban Philadelphia. Born in 1945, the divorced mother of two has worked as a secretary in San Francisco; a habadasher in Manhattan; a freelance writer for all the Philadelphia newspapers, including the Inquirer; and has won awards for both writing and mental health advocacy. Literary awards include 2005 Finalist for Creative NonFiction from the Pew Fellowship for the Arts and the 1998 Leeway Foundation Winner of Best Creative NonFiction with a prize of $5,000. Her latest award was for her poem "Red Tongue," from the 2006 Montgomery County (PA) Community College Annual Writers' Contest. She lives in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where she enjoys gardening and maintaining a blog on the above website.
Martin Dickinson
Martin Dickinson was born in Pittsburgh and spent his childhood in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts . He currently serves as vice president of an environmental organization. Martin's poems have appeared in Clamshell Broadsides, the Innisfree Poetry Journal, World of Water, World of Sand, and A Cape Cod Collection of Poetry, Fiction and Memoir, and he has read Emily Dickinson at the Library of Congress for the Favorite Poem Project. A distance runner, nature lover and hiker, he is the father of two sons and a daughter and recently became a grandfather. He lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Moira Egan
Moira Egan's first book of poems, Cleave (WWPH, 2004), was nominated for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gargoyle, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Potomac Review, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, 32 Poems, and West Branch, among many others. In Italy, a selection of her poems will appear in translation in Nuovi Argomenti and as a collection in a new series of American poets. Her work is featured in the anthologies Kindled Terraces: American Poets in Greece; Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics; Sex & Chocolate; and Discovering Genre: Poetry. Her work has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Two of her Bar Napkin Sonnets won First Place in the Baltimore City Paper Poetry Contest (2005). She has been a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a VCCA International Fellow at the St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Malta. Egan lives in Baltimore, edits individual poetry manuscripts, and teaches workshops at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD.
Ronda Eller
Ronda's first chapbook of poetry was My Harmonic Perfection (HMS Press, London, Ontario, Canada 1994). Immediately afterward, she began her own family and withdrew from the public forum, continuing to write and returned to it in the fall of 2005. Recent submissions have been published in Poemata, Canadian Poetry Association Quarterly Newsletter and Canadian Zen Haiku Canadienne Quarterly. She has also recently released her second book: Whale Songs in the Aurora Borealis, HMS Press, 2005; a 50 page book of Yeats-styled poetry. Ronda's work and reviews can be found at http://www/angelfire.com/rwicks/art2/index.html
Martin Galvin
Martin Galvin has had poems in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The New Republic, JAMA, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Midwest Review, OntheBus, and many others. His book Wild Card won the Columbia Award (1989) judged by Howard Nemerov.
Bernard Jankowski
Bernard Jankowski's first book, The Bullfrog Does Not Imagine New Towns, won the Washington Writers Publishing House Baltimore-Washington Contest. His poems have been published in journals such as Atlanta Review, Baltimore Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, G.W. Review, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Sycamore Review, and Visions International. Mr. Jankowski has been a featured poet online on Poetry Daily. He is currently working with Boston-based blues pianist Bruce Bears on a recording of his Shamokin Monologues. Mr. Jankowski co-owns a business in Frederick, Md., which provides fundraising research and database consulting services to nonprofit organizations and publishing companies. He received his M.A. in Anthropology and Folklore from the University of Arizona and resides in Poolesville, Md.
Hiram Larew
Hiram Larew's work has appeared in several poetry journals and he has received poetry awards such as the Louisiana Literature Poetry prize. He lives in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

Lenny Lianne
Born in Washington, DC, Lenny Lianne received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Her poems recently have appeared in Mudlark, Rattle, Hidden Oak, Epicenter, Poet Lore, Friendly Woman, Tidepools, San Diego Arts and Poets Magazine (forthcoming in Poetry Motel and THEMA) as well as the anthologies Driftwood Highway and Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller's Cabin, 1984-2001. She received several prizes in the Poetry Society of Virginia 2006 Adult Contest, Honorable Mention in the 2003 Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest, and Meritorious Mention in the San Diego Writers' Poetry Contest, and Meritorious Mention in the San Diego Writers' Cooperative 4th Annual Writing Contest, and was an award winner in Tidepools (2003 and 2005). Lenny Lianne lives with her husband in Ramona, California.

Michael H. Lythgoe
Michael H. Lythgoe's collection, Brass, was selected by Katherine Smith as the winner of the Kinloch Rivers Chapbook contest for 2006. It will be published by the Poetry Society of South Carolina in September 2006. He has recent work in The Upstart Crow: A Shakespeare Journal, Kakalak, In The Yard, The PSSC Yearbook 2006, Ruah XVI, Southern Revival (Deep Magic For Hurricane Relief), and Windhover. Mike lives in Aiken, SC, with his wife, Louise.

Judith McCombs
Judith McCombs grew up in almost all the continental states, in a geodetic surveyor's family. Her work appears in Calyx, Nimrod (a Neruda Award), Poet Lore, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Potomac Review (Poetry Prize), Prairie Schooner, Prism, Sisters of the Earth, & online in Beltway, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Not Just Air. She has held NEH and Canadian Senior Embassy Fellowships, and Michigan & Maryland Arts Awards. The poems appearing here are from her most recent book, The Habit of Fire: Poems Selected & New, a 2006 finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. She teaches at the Writer's Center in Bethesda MD, arranges the Kensington Row Bookshop poetry readings, and was poetry editor for the 2005-06 Potomac Review Hilary Tham tribute issue.
Susan Bucci Mockler
Susan Bucci Mockler teaches poetry workshops in the Arlington , Va. , school system. Her work has been published or is forthcoming from the Paterson Literary Review, Poet Lore, The California Quarterly, and Voices in Italian Americana. She is the recipient of two Washington Post Grants in the Arts and lives in Arlington with her husband and three children.
Miles David Moore
Miles David Moore is a Washington reporter for Crain Communications, Inc. He is founder and host of the Iota Poetry Reading Series in Arlington, VA, a member of the Board of Directors of The Word Works, Inc., and administrator of The Word Works Washington Prize. He is the author of three books of poetry: The Bears of Paris (The Word Works Capital Collection, 1995); Buddha Isn't Laughing (Argonne Hotel Press, 1999); and Rollercoaster (The Word Works Capital Collection, 2004). With Karren LaLonde Alenier and Hilary Tham, he co-edited Winners: A Retrospective of the Washington Prize, published in 1999 by The Word Works. Fatslug Unbound, a CD of Moore's poetry read by himself and 14 other poets, was realeased in 2000 by Minimus Productions. His review/essays on the poet John Haines have appeared in The Wilderness of Vision (Story Line Press, 1996) and A Gradual Twilight (CavanKerry Press, 2003).

Kathi Morrison-Taylor
Kathi Morrison-Taylor's work has appeared in Seattle Review, Southern Poetry Review, River City, New York Quarterly, and other journals, most recently Beltway Poetry Quarterly's DC Places issue. Her poem "Hermit Crab" won the Moving Words competition in 2005 and appeared on Northern Virginia Metro buses. She has taught high school and middle school English for the last fifteen years and will branch out to work as an assistant librarian in the fall.
Bonnie Naradzay
Bonnie Naradzay served in the Peace Corps in Southern India, taught college, and now works for the Federal Government. She had a graduate school class with Robert Lowell in the 1960's and has returned to poetry late in life now that her children are grown. She is enrolled in the Stone Coast (University of Southern Maine) low residency MFA program. Her work has appeared, or will appear, in Salt River Review Convergence, Beltway, and The Potomac.
Barbara J. Orton
Barbara J. Orton's poems appear in three anthologies, The New Young American Poets, New Voices, and Under the Rock Umbrella. Her work also appears in a Web chapbook published by The Literary Review and in journals including Ploughshares, Pleiades, The Yale Review, 32 Poems, Slope, and The Innisfree Poetry Journal.

Steven Pelcman
Steven Pelcman is a writer of poetry and short stories who has spent
the past few years completing a first novel titled Riverbed. He has been
published in a number of small magazines. He has spent the last ten
years residing in Germany where he is a language communications trainer and
has had the opportunity to continue his writing, travel the world, and
enjoy the challenges cross cultural experiences provide.
Roger Pfingston
Roger Pfingston's poems and photographs have appeared recently in The MacGuffin, Texas Poetry Journal, Ellipsis, Poems Niederngasse, The Sun, The Ledge, Triplopia, and Diner. He also has poems coming out in Talking River and Say This of Horses from Iowa Press, an anthology scheduled for publication in 2007.

Jacqueline Powers
Jacqueline Powers' work has been published in canwehaveourballback, [plug].poetry, Delirium Journal, kaleidowhirl, Poesia, Chronogram, California Quarterly, Blood Orange Review, Dalhousie Review, Rhode Island Rhodes, and Storyglossia. Her play, "Swimming Upstream," was produced in Ithaca, N.Y.

Julie Preis
Julie Preis recently returned to writing after a long hiatus, during which she aged considerably and decided, "It's now or never." She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, and works in downtown Washington, D.C.
Eve Rifkah
Eve Rifkah is Artistic Director of Poetry Oasis, Inc., a non-profit, poetry association and Editor of the literary journal, Diner. She is an adjunct professor in English at Worcester State College. Her MFA in Writing is from Vermont College. Her poems have been or will be published in 5 AM, The MacGuffin, Belleview Literary Review, The Worcester Review. Discovery (a magazine in Braille), California Quarterly, Copper Nickle, Porcupine, South New Hampshire Literary Journal, Re Dactions and others. Rifkah has been a finalist in The Portlandia, the Main Street Rag and Tupelo Press chapbook contests and Tampa Review, Elixir and Tupelo Press book contests. Her chapbook, At the Leprosarium, won the Revelever Press contest and was published in April 2004. The poems appearing here are from her manuscript, Dear Suzanne, a mix of poems documenting the life of the famous model and artist Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) and epistolary autobiographical poems from moments in Valadon's life that she sees as parallel to her own. Valadon was the mother of the post-impressionist painter Maurice Utrillo and herself the first woman to paint children of the poor, male nudes, and nude self-portraits as she aged.

Kim Roberts
Kim Roberts is the author of a book of poems, The Wishbone Galaxy, and editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DC Commission on the Arts, and the Humanities Council of Washington, as well as writer's residencies at eleven artist colonies. Her poems have appeared in journals beginning with every letter of the alphabet.

Teri Rosen
Teri Rosen has been a writer, editor, and teacher of writing for more than twenty-five years. Her work has appeared in a broad range of consumer, scholarly, and professional publications. She currently teaches writing at Hunter College and Fordham University.

Helen Ruggieri
Helen Ruggieri lives in Olean, NY and has a book of haibun, The Character for Woman, available from foothillspublishing.com and a book of poems, Glimmer Girls, from mayapplepress.com.

Karen Saunders
Karen Saunders has been writing poetry since childhood, although this is her first submission for publication. She holds a double BA in Russian Language and Literature and International Relations from Tufts University, and a master's degree in International Development from American University in Washington, DC. She is fluent in Russian and lived in Moscow and St. Petersburg for two years in the early 1990s. Most recently, she worked at a Washington-area research center on transnational crime and corruption, for which she traveled extensively throughout Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. She lives in Kensington, MD, with her husband and their two young sons.
Karen Schubert
Karen Schubert grows flowers in her great-grandmother's garden in northeast Ohio . She's a graduate student in the English department at Youngstown State University and recipient of YSU's Hare Award for poetry. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Mid-America Poetry Review, DMQ, Primavera, Versal, Vision-International, YSU's Penguin Review, and others.
J.D. Smith
J.D. Smith's books include the collection Settling for Beauty (Cherry Grove Collections, http://www.cherry-grove.com), his first collection, The Hypothetical Landscape, and the edited anthology Northern Music: Poems about and Inspired by Glenn Gould. His work has received three Pushcart nominations, and his prose has appeared in Chelsea, Exquisite Corpse, Grist and Pleiades. Additional information is available at his web site, www.jdsmithwriter.com.

Dean Smith
Dean Smith's poems have appeared in Poetry East, Open City, The Pearl, The Virginia Literary Review, The Charlotte Review, and Gulf Stream, among others. His book of poems, American Boy won the 2000 Washington Writer's Prize and was also awarded the Maryland Prize for Literature in 2001 for the best book published by a Maryland writer over the past three years. He received an MFA in Poetry in 1989 from Columbia University.
Rose Solari
Rose Solari is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Orpheus in the Park (The Bunny and the Crocodile) and Difficult Weather (Gut Punch), and two chapbooks. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon). She is the Visiting Writer of the Mitchell Gallery at St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, and is a member of the faculty of the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her website is www.rosesolari.com.
Margo Solod
Margo Solod's poetry has been published in more than 70 magazines, most recently Poemelon, Chiron Review, Heat City Review, The Horsethief's Journal Potomac Review, Thunder Sandwich, Three Candles, Common Ground, Comstock Review, Heliotrope, and Lunarosity. Her chapbook, Outside the Kremlin, won the 1995 Kingman Page Award and was published by Nightshade Press. Her three other chapbooks have been published by Tortilla Press, Talent House Press, and Flying Turtle Press. Her book, Some Very Soft Days, was published in 2005 by Mayapple Press.
Colette Thomas
Colette Thomas has presented her poetry in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere since the early 1980s, in settings including the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and Harvard University. She is the recipient of several poetry awards from Harvard, where she studied with Seamus Heaney. Her poems have appeared in Grand Street, Poet Lore, WordWrights, and other magazines, and in anthologies of Washington-area poets. Colette also teaches Daoist meditation and is a long-time student of the I Ching.
Steven Trebellas
Steven Trebellas received his MFA from Southern Illinois University. He lives in Burlington, Iowa, where he works on old buildings and hopes not to have to teach basic composition and grade papers. He grew up west of Chicago, the son of an engineer and a Spanish teacher. He worked as a mechanic before completing a B.A and going on to study writing. He grew up reading the "Beats." His work has appeared or will appear in Boxcar Poetry Review, Pomeleon, Hiss Quarterly, and Cezanne's Carrot.
Rosemary Winslow
Rosemary Winslow teaches writing and literature at The Catholic University of America. Her poems and essays on poetry have appeared widely in journals and books, most recently in Beltway, Poet Lore, 32 Poems, The Schuykill Valley Journal, and Voices from Frost Place, and Don't Call It That and is forthcoming in two anthologies: Pinstripe Fedora and Valparaiso Poetry Review. She has published numerous essays on sound structure in poetry in Poetics Today, Language and Style, Composition Studies, The Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Poetry, and other places. She recently won the 2006 Larry Neal Award for Poetry. Her work has also received awards and grants from The District of Columbia Commission on the Arts, NEH, the Vermont Studio Center, and other foundations. She lives with her husband John, a visual artist, in downtown Washington, D.C.
Kathi Wolfe
Kathi Wolfe is a writer and poet living in Falls Church, Va. Her journalism has appeared in The Washington Post, Utne Reader, and other publications. Her poetry has appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Not Just Air, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, the Potomac Review, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarerly, Disabilities Studies Quarterly, Kaleidoscope Magazine, and the Ragged Edge. In 2004, Moon Pie Press published a limited edition letter press chapbook of her poems. In 2004 and 2006, she did poetry residencies at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vt. She has read at several Washington, D.C. poetry reading series, including the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon series. Her poem, "Annie is Buried," is from her chapbook-in-progress on Helen Keller for which the Puffin Foundation has awarded her a grant.

Anne Harding Woodworth
Anne Harding Woodworth's poetry is published or forthcoming online and in U.S. and Canadian journals, such as TriQuarterly, Cimarron Review, Antigonish Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She is the author of three books of poetry and lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Her homepage can be found at www.annehardingwoodworth.com.

Ernie Wormwood
Ernie Wormwood is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her poems have appeared in yawp, Convergence, The Antietam Review, Underwire, Beltway Quarterly, The Cafe Review, Rhino, Raintiger, and in the anthologies Poetic Voices Without Borders and Only the Sea Keeps:
Poetry of the Tsunami. She lives in Leonardtown, Maryland.

Katherine Young
Katherine E. Young's poems have appeared most recently in The Iowa Review (where she is a three-time finalist for the Iowa Award), Southern Poetry Review, Shenandoah, and The Carolina Quarterly. She is a three-time semifinalist for the "Discovery"/The Nation award, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.