Hanna Andrews is a New York native, now residing in Chicago. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia College. Hanna is a founding editor of Switchback Books, an independent press publishing women's poetry. Recent work is found in/forthcoming from: DIAGRAM, Caketrain, 27 rue de fleures, and Columbia Poetry Review. 

Leanne Averbach is a Canadian text and performance poet who lives in New York and Vancouver. Her work has been published in literary magazines and performed with musicians across Canada, and in the US, UK and Italy. Her first book, Fever (Mansfield Press, Toronto), was short-listed for the national Gerald Lambert first poetry book prize in 2006. Her companion CD Fever is a fusion of her spoken words and the blues/jazz original accompaniment of the Vancouver group, Indigo. For more information see www.leanneaverbach.com

Dodie Bellamy's collection, Academonia was published by Krupskaya in 2006. Other books include Pink Steam and The Letters of Mina Harker. Her book Cunt-Ups won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for poetry.

Charles Bernstein's Islets/Irritations, Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984, A Poetics, and Controlling Interests are now back in print. He lives in New York and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. More info at epc.buffalo.edu.
 

Graeme Bezanson lives in Brooklyn and works with children with cognitive disorders.  He is the poetry editor of LIT and the founding editor of Coldfront Magazine.  His writing has appeared most recently in, or is forthcoming from, Failbetter, Small Spiral Notebook, Spinning Jenny, and The Agriculture Reader.

Kristy Bowen lives in Chicago where she writes poems and makes vague attempts at collage and book arts. She is the author of the fever almanac (Ghost Road Press, 2006) and feign (New Michigan Press, 2007), as well as another project, in the bird museum, forthcoming from Dusie Press Books. She is also the editor of the online lit zine wicked alice and founder of dancing girl press, devoted to publishing work by women writers. She is obsessed with victoriana, carnivals/sideshows, horror films, Joseph Cornell, archives, old scientific & botanical illustrations, postcards, and all things paper. Visit her site: www.kristybowen.net.

Margaret Brady, a recovering Catholic, journalist, and PR flack, recently completed her MFA in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. Her work has appeared in Columbia Poetry Review.

Suzanne Buffam was born and raised in Canada, and moved to the States to attend graduate school.  She is the author of Past Imperfect, a collection of poems published in 2005 with Anansi Press in Toronto, and Interiors, a chapbook published last year with Delirium Press in Montreal.  Her poems have appeared in numerous journals in Canada and the U.S., including Jubilat, A Public Space, The Denver Quarterly, The Canary, Court Green, and Poetry.  She currently lives in Chicago and teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.
 

Connie Deanovich is the author of Zombie Jet, Watusi Titanic, and many poems that appear in literary magazines and anthologies.  She lives in Madison, Wisconsin. 

C.H. Eding lives in Chicago. Her work has  appeared in Columbia Poetry Review and Indiana Review. She has a particular fondness for the words of Francis Ponge.
 

Jim Elledge’s most recent collection, A History of My Tattoo (Stonewall, 2006), is a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award and the Lambda Literary Award for gay men’s poetry. His chapbook, The Book of the Heart Taken by Love: 20 Selections, is due this summer from Woodland Editions.

Edward Field received a Lambda Award for Counting Myself Lucky, Selected Poems 1963-1992. His memoir, The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag, and Other Intimate Literary Portraits of the Bohemian Era, is just out in paperback, and a new book of poems, After the Fall, Poems Old and New, is forthcoming. He lives in New York City with his partner Neil Derrick, with whom he collaborated on the four-generation historical novel of Greenwich Village, The Villagers. More information is available on his website, www.edwardfield.com.

Lisa Fishman's third book, The Happiness Experiment, has just been published by Ahsahta Press. She also has a new chapbook, KabbaLoom, coming out this Spring on Wyrd Press in Boulder, Colorado. Her earlier books are Dear, Read (Ahsahta, 2002) and The Deep Heart's Core Is a Suitcase (New Issues Press, 1998).

Michael Friedman is the author of a novel, Martian Dawn (Turtle Point Press, 2006), and six books and chapbooks of poetry, including the collection of prose poems Species (The Figures, 2000). He has edited the journal Shiny since 1986.

Brad Gooch is a recipient of a 2007 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He is writing a biography of Flannery O'Connor for Little, Brown.

Chet Gresham lives in Evanston, IL with Maggie, cat, birds, and gnome. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Florida Review, Columbia Poetry Review, and Pebble Lake Review.

Chris Green is an editor for RHINO and also founder of Green Horse, an organization linking poets to political activism and literary service work. His chapbook, Conceptual Animals, was published by Sheltering Pines Press in January, 2007. His first book, The Sky Over Walgreens, will be published by Mayapple Press in August, 2007.
 

Bruce Hainley lives and works in Los Angeles.  His book of poems, FOUL MOUTH, is available from 2nd Cannons; his collaboration with John Waters, ART~A SEX BOOK, was published by Thames & Hudson in 2003.

Ian Harris grew up in Twin Falls, ID. His recent work
appears in Black Warrior Review, Notre Dame Review, Kenyon Review, Caketrain, and AGNI Online.

Jana Harris's most recent books of poetry are: Oh, How Can I Keep on Singing, Voices of Pioneer Women and We Never Speak of It, Idaho-Wyoming Poems, 1889-90, both published by Ontario Review Press (Princeton). She is founder and editor of Switched-on Gutenberg, one of the first electronic poetry journals of the English-speaking world. She teaches creative writing on-line at the University of Washington.

Natalie Hill is a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago, where she studied Poetry and Women & Gender Studies.  Her work has previously appeared in The Indiana Review, Inkstains, and Columbia Poetry Review.  She is currently working in Chicago as a disgruntled corporate temp.

Brandi Homan is editor-in-chief of Switchback Books. Her work has appeared in magazines like Salt Hill, North American Review, Fugue, DIAGRAM, CutBank, and Natural Bridge, and her chapbook, Two Kinds of Arson, is available from dancing girl press.

Cora Jacobs is in her last year as an undergraduate poetry major at Columbia College Chicago.  She is the managing editor for Court Green.  Poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review and forthcoming in Susquehanna Review.

Charles Jensen is the author of the chapbooks Little Burning Edens and Living Things, which won the 2006 Frank O’Hara chapbook award.  His poetry has appeared in Bloom, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Journal, New England Review, and West Branch.  He is the assistant director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
 

Richard Johns grew up in Chicago and now lives, with his boyfriend of many years, in a small town on the far western fringe of that lovely city’s metropolitan sprawl. Three widely unavailable chapbooks bear his name: 2000 Poems, Hollywood Beach, and Explicit Lyrics: Poems.

Amanda M. Johnson is currently completing her MFA in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago where she also teaches composition. Her poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review.

A. Van Jordan is the author of three books: Rise, published by Tia Chucha Press in 2001; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, published in 2004, and Quantum Lyrics, published in 2007, both by W. W. Norton & Company. He teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, and he is a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Vincent Katz is a poet, editor and translator. He is the author of the books of poems, RAPID DEPARTURES (2005), UNDERSTANDING OBJECTS (2000), and PEARL (1998). He won ALTA's 2005 National Translation Award for his translations of the Roman love poet, Sextus Propertius, published by Princeton. He is the editor of VANITAS magazine and Libellum books.

Photo Credit: Vincent Katz Reading at Moe's, Febraury 20, 2007 (Photo: Robert Eliason)

erica kaufman is the author of the chapbooks: censory impulse (big game books), civilization day (open 24 hours), a familiar album ( winner of the 2003 New School Chapbook Contest), and others.  She is the co-curator/publisher of the Belladonna small press and reading series.  erica lives in Brooklyn.

Becca Klaver was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI. She's currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago, where she teaches and co-edits the Columbia Poetry Review. She's also a poet-in-residence through the Chicago Poetry Center's Hands on Stanzas program and a founding editor of Switchback Books, a new women's poetry press.

Brian Kloppenberg received his BA in English and Dance from Swarthmore College, and his MFA in Modern Dance Choreography from The Ohio State University.  His work as a choreographer, performer and teacher has been presented both in New York City and nationally.  Kloppenberg currently works as a psychoanalyst and a teacher of the Alexander Technique.  His poetry is forthcoming in the journals Court Green, LIT, and New York Quarterly.

Rodney Koeneke is the author of Musee Mechanique (BlazeVOX, 2006) and Rouge State (Pavement Saw, 2003). These poems are from a new manuscript he calls for the present Etruria. He lives in Portland, OR with his wife, Lesley Poirier, and their young son Auden.

27th book, March 18, 2003, 3rd edition, (Libellum/Charta) published in 2006. Awards include two NEA Poetry grants, 1974 & 1981; 92nd St. Y "Discovery Award" 1972; PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature for Cant be Wrong (Coffee House) 1997; 2000 American Book Award for It's Not Nostalgia (Black Sparrow).

Joan Larkin is the author of My Body: New and Selected Poems, published in May 2007 by Hanging Loose Press. Her previous collections include Cold River, which received a Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. She was recently the visiting poet at Columbia College Chicago and is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College.

Dorianne laux is the author of Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton, 2005) winner of the Oregon Book Award and finalist for the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the best book of poems published in the United States in the Previous year.

Kimberly Lyons is the author of Saline (Instance Press, 2005). She has chapbooks from Ketalanche Press and YoYo Labs forthcoming.

Michael Magee is the author of a book of literary criticism, Emancipating Pragmatism, that won the Elizabeth Agree Prize in 2004; and four books of poetry, including most recently, Mainstream (BlazeVox 2006) and My Angie Dickinson (Zasterle 2007). Working sometimes in academia and sometimes in politics, he also directs the literary arts organization, Combo Arts.
 

Gillian McCain is the author of two books of poetry: Tilt and Religion. She is the co-author (with Legs McNeil) of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk.

Photo by Kate Simon, copyright 2005.
 

Sharon Mesmer's forthcoming poetry collections are  Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books, 2007) and The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose, 2008). Recent work appears in New American Writing , The Brooklyn Rail, LIT, Big Bridge, and Traffic. She is a member of the flarf collective.

Jo McDougall is the author of five books of poetry; the most recent are Dirt and Satisfied With Havoc, Autumn House Press. A native of Arkansas, she lives in Kansas City.

Richard Meier is the author of two books of poetry, Shelley Gave Jane a Guitar (Wave, 2006) and Terrain Vague (Wave/Verse Press, 2001). He lives in Chicago and Orfordville, WI.

Michael Montlack lives in New York City, teaches at Berkeley College, and is editing an anthology of Gay Men on their Divas. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Cimarron Review, New York Quarterly, Poet Lore, Bloom, Ledge, Cream City Review, Gay and Lesbian Review, and other journals. This year he was a Frank O'Hara Award finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of a Ucross Writer's residency in Wyoming.

Maggie Nelson is the author of two books of nonfiction, The Red Parts: A Memoir (Free Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007), as well as several books of poetry, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull, 2005; finalist, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir). A recipient of a 2007 Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant, she currently teaches at CalArts in Valencia, California, and lives in Los Angeles.

Linda Oh was born and raised in Chicago. She recently moved to Brooklyn, NY, where she plans to find her dream job in publishing and earn an MFA. She is second generation Korean American. She has attended the Kundiman Poetry Retreat, appeared on Chicago Public Radio, and edited Columbia Poetry Review.

Daniela Olszewska is an Editorial Assistant for Switchback Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Keep Going, Melancholia’s Tremulous Dreadlocks, Clemson Poetry Review, 27 rue de Fleurs, Shampoo, La Petite Zine, and Columbia Poetry Review.

Maureen Owen is the author of nine books of poetry and editor of Telephone Books Press. Her recent title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. Her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of Before Columbus American Book Award. Other books include Imaginary Income, Zombie Notes, and Untapped Maps. She is on the adjunct faculty at Naropa University and is the editor of Naropa’s OnLine Zine not enough night.

Ethel Rackin's poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Volt, Court Green, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing at Penn State's Delaware County campus, Haverford College, and the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts. She is currently a doctoral candidate in English at Princeton University.

Maxine Scates is the author of two books of poetry, Black Loam (Cherry Grove Collections) and Toluca Street (University of Pittsburgh Press). She is also co-editor, with David Trinidad, of Holding Our Own: The Selected Poems of Ann Stanford (Copper Canyon). She live in Eugene, Oregon.
 

Jason Schneiderman is the author of Sublimation Point, a Stahlecker Selection from Four Way Books. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Tin House, The American Poetry Review, Grand Street, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, and Best American Poetry 2006. He is the recipient of fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Corporation of Yaddo. He is currently a Chancellor’s Fellow at the CUNY’s Graduate Center and teaches literature at Hunter College.

Lloyd Schwartz is Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Classical Music Editor of The Boston Phoenix, and a regular commentator for NPR's Fresh Air. His most recent book of poems is Cairo Traffic (University of Chicago Press), and he is currently co-editing the collected works of Elizabeth Bishop for the Library of America. His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and The Best American Poetry. In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.  Photo by David Stang.

Pop-culture journalist Gregg Shapiro’s interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBT publications and websites. His poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous outlets including literary journals such as Beltway, modern words, Bloom, Blithe House Quarterly, and the anthologies Sex & Chocolate: Tasty Morsels for Mind and Body (Paycock Press) and Blood to Remember. His collection of poems, Protection, is forthcoming from Gival Press. He lives in Chicago with his life-partner Rick and their dogs, Dusty and k.d.

Photo courtesy of www.feastoffools.net
 

James Shea lives in Chicago. His work has appeared in various journals, including American Letters and Commentary, Crowd, Gulf Coast, jubilat, and Verse.

 

Aaron Smith is the author of Blue on Blue Ground (Pittsburgh, 2005), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His chapbook, What's Required (Thorngate Road 2003), won the Frank O'Hara Award. He lives in New York City and is a poetry co-editor for Bloom.
 

Joan Jobe Smith, founding editor of Pearl and Bukowski Review, won the 2006 Nerve Cowboy Chapbook Competition with Teatime at the Bouquet Morale (co-authored with Fred Voss), and her book The Pow Wow Cafe was a 1999 Forward Prize finalist.

Joris Soeding is the author of Surfaces Diminished and Trees. Otherness. Instance. His poems have appeared in Apocalypse, City Works, Columbia Poetry Review, Pebble Lake Review, Red River Review, Romantic Outsider (England), and Third Coast Press. He is a Poet-in-Residence at the Poetry Center of Chicago, an Exhibit Interpreter at the Chicago Children’s Museum, a Managing Editor for Another Chicago Magazine, and is writing a book-length poem based on horror movies.

BJ Soloy plays the warshboard, spoons, guitar, and caterwauls with an atonal abandon when happiest. He lives with a foul-mouthed cat who makes him sneeze often, a nervous dog, and his favorite person on the planet. He is fond of lists and graduated from Columbia College Chicago's Undergraduate Poetry Program.

Marti Stephen is a California poet living in Boise, Idaho. Her work has been published in Denver Quarterly, Volt, and other publications. She is the author of the chapbook Wheat’s Apostrophe and is the publisher of Spot Press. She currently works as a medical writer.
 

Mike Topp was born in Washington, D.C. He is currently living in New York City unless he has died or moved. A new book, Shorts Are Wrong, with art by William Wegman, David Berman, and Will Yackulic, is forthcoming from Unbearable Books. A previous collection, Happy Ending, is available from Future Tense Books.

Andy Trebing still speaks fluent Tennessee, but works in Chicago, where he lives with a woman, a cat and a dog called Chickenwing. Sometimes he gets the spike driver blues.
 

Tony Trigilio is the author of The Lama’s English Lessons (Three Candles Press). His poems have appeared recently in Big Bridge, Black Clock, Denver Quarterly, Diagram, La Petite Zine, and New Orleans Review. He teaches at Columbia College Chicago, where he also serves as Director of Creative Writing-Poetry and co-edits the poetry magazine Court Green.

Jennifer Watman currently resides in Chicago, IL where she is en route to receiving her BA in English/Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. She is a co-editor of Columbia Poetry Review #20, and an intern/reader for Another Chicago Magazine. She spends the flimsy strips of her free frames writing on things about things for things & recording in her uber-lo-fi home studio.

Hone in at: myspace.com/notaprisonbutatheater

Baron Wormser is the author of six books of poetry, one poetry chapbook, and a memoir. He also has co-authored two books about teaching poetry. He teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program.