Born in London, Emma Bartholomew earned an MSc in creative writing at the University of Edinburgh where she will return to work on her PhD, focusing on poetry and cartography.  Her work has been published in various literary magazines in the UK and the USA, and her first chapbook is forthcoming from Forest Publications (2011).  When she is not writing, Bartholomew teaches poetry to adolescents and young adults and accrues extensive late fees from a plethora of libraries.  ebartholomew@googlemail.com

Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet with a BA and an MA in English literature from the American University of Beirut. She lives in Bahrain with her husband and two daughters and is working on a poetry manuscript titled Re-Membering Beirut. Her poems have appeared in the Arabesques Review and the BAP Quarterly.  zeinabeck@gmail.com

"I Call It Home" Listen
"Service" Listen

Mark Jay Brewin, Jr., is a graduate candidate in the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.  His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Southern Poetry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Packingtown Review, The Yalobusha Review, New Delta Review, Poet Lore, Copper Nickel, River Oak Review, The Pinch, Milk Money, The Labletter and The Los Angeles Review. mark.jay.brewin.jr@gmail.com

Peter Caputo, who holds a PhD from Columbia University and is Associate Professor of English at Suffolk University, is at work on a second novel.  His first novel was a Finalist for the Peter Taylor Prize and his short fiction has appeared most recently in Specs Journal Art & Culture and Glossolalia.  orpheus83@verizon.net

"Palimpsest and Exile" Listen

Anna Burkey earned a graduate degree in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. She is presently the Communications and Event Coordinator at Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust.

Anna Catone’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Boston Review, Caketrain, Commonweal, The Los Angeles Review, Post Road, and elsewhere.  Recently, she was selected as a finalist for the Ellen LaForge Poetry Prize.  She is poetry editor at The Cortland Review and lives in Southborough, Massachusetts.

Lina Chern was born in the former USSR and currently lives in the Chicago area where she works for an educational toy manufacturer. Her poems have appeared in The Marlboro Review, Bellingham Review, Free Lunch, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Rhino. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  blackmug@hotmail.com

"The Border Crossing" Listen

Lucian Childs was born in Dallas and currently lives in Anchorage where he makes his living as a graphic designer. He received a bachelor's degree in English literature from Southern Methodist University and another in architecture from the University of Texas. He has studied creative writing at the University of Alaska. When not writing short stories, he is an avid hiker and is active in the local art scene.  Lchilds2@gmail.com

"Training Wheels" Listen

Patricia Davis has published poems and translations in Poet Lore, Salt Hill, Potomac Review, Puerto del Sol, and the New Laurel Review.  Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  She is author of a play, Alternative Methods, and co-author of a nonfiction book, The Blindfold’s Eyes (Orbis Books, 2004).  maripatri@aol.com

"180 Degrees of Grace" Listen
"Giving to Light" Listen

Tracy DeBrincat’s prize-winning fiction collection, Moon Is Cotton & She Laugh All Night, was published in January 2010 by Subito Press. Her short stories and poetry have appeared widely in journals from Another Chicago Magazine to Zyzzyva. She loves living in Los Angeles.  tracydebrincat@earthlink.net

"Gneiss FM" Listen

Meredith Dodson received an MFA at Georgia College and State University where she served as assistant fiction editor for Arts and Letters. She is currently working on a novel set on the shore of Lake Michigan. When not writing, she enjoys walking her ninety-pound dog along the beach.  meredith.l.dodson@gmail.com

"The Memory of Skin" Listen

Erika Eckart’s prose poems have appeared in Double Room, Quick Fiction, Quarter After Eight, and Women's Studies Quarterly. When not writing, she teaches English at a public high school on Chicago’s South Side and makes vegan baked goods for her husband and daughter.   erikaeckart@hotmail.com

Vivian Eyre’s poems have appeared in Permafrost, Asheville Poetry Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Oberon Magazine, Neu-Smoke, and elsewhere.  Vivian has been a finalist for the Dorothy Daniels Award from the National League of American Pen Women Award. She lives on the North Fork of Long Island, New York.  veyre@juno.com

Peter Grimes holds an MFA from the University of Florida. His fiction appears in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cream City Review, Lake Effect, Copper Nickel, Gulf Stream Magazine, Mid-American Review, and many others. Currently he is pursuing a PhD in English and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati where he is at work on a story collection and a novel.  grimespe@gmail.com

Robert H. Guard attended Ohio University where he studied poetry writing under Wayne Dodd and Bin Ramke.  Upon graduation, he became an advertising copywriter and has since spent his career in the marketing field. He has completed two tours of “boot camp” with The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Argestes, The Chaffin Journal, descant, Eclipse, Nimrod, Zone 3, Quercus Review,  Sycamore Review, California Quarterly, and Harpur Palate. He resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.  bguard@seedstrategy.com

Crystal Hadidian grew up in Austin, Texas and received her undergraduate education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Crystal currently resides in San Diego, where she is a graduate student at San Diego State University and a mother.  crystalhadidian@hotmail.com

"Old Men" Listen

JoeAnn Hart is the author of the novel Addled (Little, Brown, 2007), and her essays and short fiction have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. Other real estate stories have been published in Kaleidoscope, Hobart, Inkwell, and Georgetown Review.  JoeAnn@joeannhart.com

"Live Magical Moments" Listen

Margaret Hasse, recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, is author of three collections of poetry: Milk and Tides (Nodin Press, 2008), In a Sheep’s Eye, Darling: Poems (Milkweed Editions, 1993) and Stars Above, Stars Below (Talman Co, 1985). Her fourth book is forthcoming. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.   mmhasse@gmail.com

"A Small Artificial Pond" Listen
"A Line from Shakespeare, Revised" Listen
"Mississippi Queen" Listen

After earning his MA in English and Philosophy from Edinburgh University, Jan-Andrew Henderson found employment as a dishwasher. Then, after a trip to the United States, during which he threw away his return ticket, he worked in a variety of occupations, including pepper salesman, financial consultant, and Easter bunny. He eventually returned to Edinburgh to found the ghost tour company Black Hart Entertainment. He has chronicled the haunts of Scotland in a series of books, and he owes his own first name to a grievous spelling mistake.

Tom Jackson lives in Scotland, where he works as a historic interpreter and guide at Mary King’s Close in Edinburgh

With an MFA in poetry from San Francisco State University, Athena Kashyap has published her poems in Spork, The Fourth River, Asia Writes, Noe Valley Voice, and the upcoming anthology, Voices of Asian American Experiences, among other journals.  She currently resides in Bangalore, India.  athenak@gmail.com

John Knoepfle is the author of over twenty books, including prayer against famine and other irish poems (BkMk Press, 2003), Poems from the Sangamon (University of Illinois Press, 1985), and I Look Around for My Life (Burning Daylight, 2008). He is Professor Emeritus of Literature at the University of Illinois, and his awards include fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contributions to Midwestern Literature and the Illinois Center for the Book’s Literary Heritage Award. He lives in Illinois with his wife, Peggy Sower Knoepfle.  oldpoet@comcast.net

John Man is a British historian and travel writer whose interests have focused on China, Mongolia, and the evolution of written communication. Combining extensive field-research, scholarship, and personal travel narrative to craft his works, he is the author of numerous books, including Gobi: Tracking the Desert (Yale University Press, 1999), which was the first book he published on the subject in English since the 1920’s. He is also the author of Alpha Beta (Wiley, 2000), about the roots of the Roman alphabet, and The Gutenberg Revolution (Headline, 2002), focusing on the origins and impact of printing.

Linguist Allan Metcalf, author of several books, including OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word (Oxford University, 2010), is a professor of English and the Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at MacMurray College. Having earned his PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, Metcalf is a popular writer and humorist surrounding the English language, having as much fun employing the American dialect in his works as he does studying it. allan.metcalf@gmail.com

Cynthia Neely was a professional textile artist before turning to painting and poetry. Her poems have appeared in, among others, Floating Bridge Review, Autumn Sky, Loch Raven Review, and Web del Sol’s IBPC  (Interboard Poetry Community) as a finalist.  The natural world, and her place in it, has always been an important subject in her work. cynthianeely@frontier.com

"Broken Water" Listen

Croatian painter Magda Osterhuber grew up in Dolnja Dubrava, from which her family had to flee after being blacklisted during the guerilla war raging between the Croatian Army and the Partisans in the 1940s.  Narrowly escaping Tito’s Massacre at Bleiburg, Slovenia, she fled to the United States, eventually becoming a graduate of the former Springfield Junior College under the tutelage of Mother Alphonse.  Of her mentor, Oterhuber writes, “[S]he became for me one of those unforgettable teachers who recognize you and teach with the kind of deep insight into their subject that illuminates life itself.”  Osterhuber went on to earn her MFA in painting from the University of Iowa, and her thesis, The Onus of Existence, was hand-printed by Doyle Moore (The Finial Press, 1960).  She has exhibited in numerous places and continues to paint; she also writes poetry. 

Kirie Pedersen has published in Wisconsin Review, Eclipse, RiverSedge, Utne Reader, Seven Days, Glossolalia, Regeneration (Rodale Press), Northwest People, Teachers and Writers, and elsewhere. Kirie holds an MA in fiction writing and literature, having studied with Annie Dillard and Eugene K. Garber.  She divides her time between New York City and the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Kirie.pedersen@gmail.com

"Congregation of Loons" Listen

Nicholas Poluhoff received his BA in literature from Bard College. He has written music journalism for The Source and Ego Trip and has published fiction in Lullwater Review, Euphony, and Kaleidoscope.  Poluhoff@gmail.com

 Suellen Wedmore, a former Poet Laureate emerita for the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts, has been widely published.  She won first place in the Writer’s Digest rhyming poem contest, was an international winner in the Atlanta Review poetry contest, and her chapbook Deployed was selected as winner of the Grayson Press annual contest. Recently, her chapbook On Marriage and Other Parallel Universes was published by Finishing Line Press (2009).  suellenwedmore@comcast.net