Zinta Aistars is the published author of three books. She is an editor and writer for LuxEsto, the Kalamazoo College alumni magazine and contributing writer to Encore magazine. She has published poetry, travel essays, stories, and articles in the United States, Latvia, England, Sweden, Germany, and Australia. She is currently at work on a second collection of poetry as well as a compilation of essays that describe her many travels both as a physical journey and as an exploration of an inner landscape. Also underway is a novel entitled Beds.
Arlene Ang lives in Venice, Italy where she edits the Italian pages of Niederngasse. Her poetry has recently been published in Mississippi Review Online, The Pedestal Magazine, Cordite, Poetry Midwest and Offcourse Literary Journal. Three of her poems have been nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize anthology.
Rachelle Bergstein is a recent graduate of Vassar College, where she studied English Literature. She works at a literary agency and lives in Brooklyn.
Bruce Boston is the author of forty books and chapbooks, including the novel Stained Glass Rain. His stories and poems have appeared in hundreds of publications, including the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Nebula Awards Showcase. He lives in Ocala, Florida, with his wife, writer-artist Marge Simon. For more information, please visit: http://hometown.aol.com/bruboston.
John Bowker is a graduate of the Odyssey Writers Workshop. He lives and writes outside of Boston.
William Bradley is a graduate student and essayist at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His work has appeared in The Missouri Review and The Bellevue Literary Review.
By day, Terri Chastain can be found writing for a good cause. She is the grant proposal writer for United Cerebral Palsy Child Development Centers. When the moon comes out, Terri puts all those stringent guidelines away and slants her pen towards creative writing, including poetry, prose, and a full-length memoir in progress.
She is originally from Rome, Georgia, but has made a home in Orlando, Florida for twenty years. Her poetry has been published in 13th Moon, Moose Bound Press, and on-line at Sunscribbles.
Sara Cohen is currently a physician in New York. She wrote this piece several years ago.
Lynn Edge lives in Texas and enjoys the RV lifestyle which provides material for her writing. Her haibun have appeared in Wilmington Blues, and Kaleidowhirl, Long Story Short, and on the Haibun Journal resource page. "Late Snow" received an honorable mention in the Third R.H. Blyth Award 2004. She is currently working on a chapbook entitled New Mexico Missives.
Howard Emanuel received his BFA in Acting and Writing from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts and has appeared in some of the most reputable theatres across the US, working with many Tony Award-winning actors and actresses. He is set to appear Off-Broadway this June at The Zipper Theatre and is currently nearing completion of his first novel, Naked Angels, from which "Into the Woodpile" is derived. Howard resides in New York City.
Jacob Garbe has pursued his love of writing, despite the crippling handicap of a rare form of dyslexia. He overcame this by penning his stories while holding a mirror up and staring at the reflections of his words, which some say goes far in explaining many things about his stories.
Ona Gritz is the author of two children's books, Starfish Summer (HarperCollins, 1998) and Tangerines and Tea (Harry N. Abrams, forthcoming 2005). Her poetry was included in the anthology, Which Lilith? and has appeared or is forthcoming in Moment, Poetry East, The American Voice, Home Planet News, Heresies, Poetica, Literary Mama, The Plum Ruby Review, Lily and Ekphrasis where she was a finalist for the 2004 Ekphrasis prize.
Cynthia Hellyer Heinz is a full-time artist and teacher. She earned a Bachelors in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. In 2000, Cynthia received my M.F.A. from Northern Illinois University and has been teaching drawing there full time.
Cynthia became involved with the health field. Through investigation of the physical effects of time on the body, she discovered a fascination with aging flesh. Not only is she observing age on the human anatomy but time's impact on the organic matter around. She is a committed gardener and often watches as the tomatoes ripen, to rot, to seed, to regeneration. She witnesses the same cyclic effect on the matter of fabric and flesh.
Originally from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Michael Howarth is currently completing his doctorate in English at the University of Louisana in Lafayette. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska in Anchorage where, in addition to honing his craft, he learned how to survive subzero winters. During the past two years in Lafayette he has worked on a novel, taught a class on British satire in Brighton, England for the Study Abroad Program, and co-edited the 2005 issue of The Southwestern Review.
A. Leigh Jones resides in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she works for a travel agent and dreams of faraway places. Her short fiction can be found in the archives at Ideomancer and flashquake, and her first novel, Forever Crossed, is now available from ImaJinn Books.
Eric Marin is an attorney by day and a writer by night. He also publishes a speculative fiction and poetry webzine, Lone Star Stories.
Karolina Marcinkowska says of herself: "I am a girl in my mid-twenties with a recently earned MA degree in literature and an inborn passion for photography. I consider further studies in vampirology because I need a good excuse to go to Transylvania. If you wish to learn more about me, please refer to my website, http://ph78.org/."
Despite having great fun running a biker bar and working at an archaeological dig in previous years, Melissa Marr now teaches undergraduate composition and literature in whichever state she resides that year. Currently, she lives in Southern California with her spouse and two children. In Fall 2003, her early New Year's Resolution was to write texts that were neither lecture notes nor academic theory. So far, it's great fun. Forthcoming and current (non-academic) publications include fiction in Shadowed Realms, Flytrap, and Aoife's Kiss as well as poetry in flashquake, Star*Line, Dreams and Nightmares, and Brutarian.
Francis Masat was born and raised in Illinois, educated in Kansas and Nebraska, and lives in Key West. Francis is Professor Emeritus, Rowan University of New Jersey, 1972-1998. Fran enjoys volunteer work, running, and writing poetry in a tropical setting. Amaze, Bottle Rockets, Frog Pond, Heron's Nest, Lynx, Mayfly, Modern Haiku, Pegasus, Poetry Midwest, Prairie Poetry, Short Stuff, Stylus Poetry Journal, The Pedestal, and other journals have accepted his recent work.
Dave Migman lives in Glasgow, Scotland. After spending many years in Ireland and mainland Europe he has returned to Scotland. Dave has been writing for a few years and has had many poems published in British magazines such as Fire, Poetry Monthly and Inclement.
Stephen Payne is an academic psychologist. From August 1 2005 he is Chair in Interactive Systems Design at the University of Manchester, UK. He has recently started to submit poetry for publication, and has had poems accepted on-line at Snakeskin and and in print at Anon and South.
Nanette Rayman is a writer and actor living in New York City. She has been published for poetry and fiction in The Berkeley Fiction Review, The Worcester Review, Three Candles, Pedestal, Stirring, Concrete Wolf, Small Spiral Notebook, Red River Review, 5 Trope, Snow Monkey, Remark, Tyro's Pen, Verse Libre Quarterly, Inkburns, Millennium Papers, Disquieting Muses, Dakota House Journal, Comrades, Pinball, Xanadu — The Long Island Poetry Collective, The Rogue Scholar, Ululation, Octavo, Words and Pictures Magazine, Square Lake, Carve, The American Muse, Conversely, UNO Anthology. Runner-up for nomination for PUSHCART PRIZE 2003 Red River Review. Honorable Mention in 2000 Writer's Digest Fiction Contest.
Doug Rennie is a Portland, Ore. writer whose short fiction collection, Badlands, was a 2003 Oregon Book Awards finalist. His stories have appeared in over 40 publications, including The Quarterly, American Fiction: Best Stories by Emerging Writers, Rosebud and The Cream City Review.
J. Sallini-Genovese is a teacher of mathematics, which should not imply any special ability in the discipline. His stories, for example, don’t always add up in the end. Publication credits include Pindeldyboz, Opium Magazine, Yankee Pot Roast, Facsimilation, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), Insolent Rudder, The Dead Mule, uber, Ten Thousand Monkeys, Copperfield Review, Rumble, Skive, Subterranean Quarterly, Defenestration, and Thieves Jargon.
Elizabeth Scott lives and works just outside Washington, D.C. Her first short story, "Red," was published in Mytholog's second anniversary issue.
Laurie Seidler lives in San Jose, California. Her writing has appeared in Hobart, Scrivener's Pen, In Posse Review, Bewildering Stories, Writer's Digest, and other magazines and newspapers. She is the editor of VerbSap.com.
Kay Sexton has an overdeveloped work ethic and a fig tree in her garden. She finds it hard to reconcile the two. She is a Jerry Jazz Fiction Award winner, with a column at www.moondance.org and another at www.facsimilation.com. Her short-short story "Domestic Violence" was runner up in The Guardian fiction contest, "Tats" just earned an honourable mention in the Desdemona's Erotic Fiction contest and her work appears in seven anthologies in 2004. Her website www.charybdis.freeserve.co.uk gives details of her current and forthcoming publications. The fig tree is also flourishing.
Kimberly Ann Srock manages to feed herself and her dog by teaching composition to often surly, yet entertaining college freshmen while pursuing a master's degree in English and a certificate in Writing Nonfiction. She does not, however, manage to sleep much, as she spends most of her nights writing the memoir she is about to publish as her thesis, Dogs Eat Hearing Aids.
Lydia Fazio Theys is an astronomer by training, a technical writer by necessity and a creative writer by night. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and their two children. Two cats, a neurotic Italian Greyhound, and whatever else wanders in through the cat door round out the mix. Lydia has a regular CNF column in Moondance for which she is a 2004 Pushcart nominee. Her work has or will appear in Yankee Pot Roast, Gator Springs Gazette, Quintessence, Somewhat, Quilted in Gator Springs, and FlashFiction.net, and has been read on KRCB public radio's Word by Word program.
Donna Vorreyer lives and writes in Hinsdale, Illinois, where she also works trying to convince eighth graders that reading and writing are fun. She gets plenty of time to develop ideas while traveling and day-to-day living with her husband and son who have become used to the constant presence of a notebook. Her poetry and essay work have appeared in both trade and literary magazines.