Ryan Allen is a Course Mentor in Language and Communications at Western Governors University and is the Creative Writing Editor for 605 Magazine. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of South Dakota in May 2009. His essays and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The Louisville Review, 605 Magazine, The Oregon Literary Review, VLP Magazine, LEO Magazine and Planet Jackson Hole. He currently lives in Sioux City, Iowa with his wife.

Eileen Apperson received a MA in creative writing with an emphasis in nonfiction prose and a MFA in poetry from CSU, Fresno. She teaches creative nonfiction, literature, and composition at Reedley College. Eileen's latest writing project is in fact an old one as she has dusted-off the pages of a 10-year old manuscript and is working with a documentary film maker to bring her vision of landscape and memory to the screen.

Fred Arroyo is the author of the novel The Region of Lost Names (U of Arizona P, 2008). Named one of the Top Ten New Latino Authors to Watch (and Read) in 2009 by LatinoStories.com, Fred is also a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission. He has completed a collection of stories, Borders of the Heart, and is now working on a novel (Fruits of Paradise) primarily set in the Caribbean. He has published short stories and poetry in various literary journals. Three of his essays have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, and they are part of a book—Close as Pages in a Book—he’s completing, in which he lyrically meditates on work, writing, migration and place. Currently he is an assistant professor of English at Drake University, as well as a faculty mentor in the University of Nebraska MFA in Writing low-residency program.

Makalani Bandele is a Louisville, KY native who has recently returned to the city and writing poetry. Some know him as Rev. Michael Penman for he is an ordained Baptist minister and has pastored churches in New Bern and Fayetteville North Carolina. He earned his B.A. from the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and his M.Div from Shaw University Divinity School. A member of the Affrilachian Poets since 2008, his poetry has been anthologized in My Brother’s Keeper and The Storytellers, and has been picked for upcoming issues of the African-American Review and Mythium Literary Magazine. He is a winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize for Poetry Prize. He has self-published a chapbook called The Cadence of Echoes; a forthcoming book with Willow Books will be out the Fall 2011 tentatively entitled The Old, the New, the Borrowed, and the Blues, and he is presently working on a volume of poetry influenced by the recordings and travels of Alan Lomax in the Deep South.

Haitian writer/sociologist/anthropologist representative of Batay Ouvrier movement co-author with her husband, Didier Dominique, of a prize-winning book on Vodou as "the cornerstone of Haitian identity."

Kimberly L. Becker is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. Her poetry appears recently in *Diverse Voices Quarterly*, *Future Earth Magazine*, *I Was Indian* (FootHills), and *Poets and Artists*. Finalist for the DeNovo Award (C&R Press), she received funding from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County (MD) to study Cherokee language, history, culture in Cherokee, NC. Current projects include adapting Cherokee myths into plays for Cherokee Youth in Radio.

Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. Currently, he lives in Tucson, Arizona. He is Diné of the Todich’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tl’izilani (Many Goats Clan). He holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program and is completing his studies at the University of Arizona. He is the recipient of the 2000-01 Individual Poet Grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, a 1999 Truman Capote Creative Writing Fellowship at IAIA, a Lannan Foundation Marfa Residency and a 2006 Whiting Writers’ Award. Books include: Shapeshift (U of Az Press) and Flood Song American Book Award, PEN Open Book Award (Copper Canyon).

The excerpt from Sherwin Bitsui’s Flood Song (2009) is used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Tim Black is a father, teacher, poet, student and author of the recent novella, Connecticut Shade. He has had poetry published in several journals and magazines, and is the recent winner of the Helen W. Kenefick Poetry Prize for his poem, Heavy Freight. Tim lives in Wakefield, Nebraska, with his lovely wife Cindy and their two children, all of whom provide endless inspiration and material.

"The Moth Eater" was originally published in Black Magnolias Literary Journal 5.2.

Boadiba is the pen-name of a Haitian poet whose poems and translations have appeared in the journals Split Shift, Compages, and Boumba, among others. She is the co-translator, with Jack Hirschman, of Open Gate, the first major anthology of Haitian Creole poetry, to be published by Curbstone Press.

Jason Lee Brown teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University. His fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals and has been nominated for six Pushcart Prizes. He is finishing his first novel.

Chuck Calabreze‘s poems are collected in an unpublished chapbook, Twenty Songs of Despair, and an unpublished full length book, How is this Fun. His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Left Facing Bird, New Hampshire Review, Ploughshares, turnrow, Countermeasures, and Indiana Review, occasionally under the pseudonym "Jon Davis." After failing in his 2004 bid to become U.S. Poet Laureate, Chuck has mounted a campaign to become, instead, the first U.S. Poete Maudit.

Sara Campos is a lawyer and writer living in Berkeley, California. Her fiction, prose and poetry have appeared in St. Ann's Review, Rio Grande Review, Literary Mama, Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, Penwomanship, Long Story Short, The Womanist, New Verses News, The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Alter Net Media, Colorlines and The San Francisco Examiner.

GEORGES CASTERA/JOJ KASTRA, one of the leading poets of Haiti, was born in Port-au-Prince in 1936. After living many years in exile, he returned to his native land after the fall of Baby Doc Duvalier’s regime. He has been publishing books of poems in both Haitian and French since 1965. In his exile, while living in New York, he was known as a brilliant theoretician who wrote incendiary tracts in the Haitian language calling for the overthrow of the hated Duvalier dictatorship. His poems were a key incentive for the late poet Paul Laraque to create Curbstone Press’ major anthology of Haitian poetry, Open Gate. Castera’s Wisdom Teeth was published bilingually in 2007.

Joy Castro is the author of the memoir The Truth Book, and her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, North American Review, Chelsea, and The New York Times Magazine. She teaches literature, Latina/o studies, and creative nonfiction writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is an associate professor of English and Ethnic Studies and the associate director of Ethnic Studies. Her memoir Island of Bones is forthcoming from University of Nebraska.

David Cheezem owns a bookstore in Palmer, Alaska with his wife, Melissa Behnke. (See www.goodbooksbadcoffee.com). He is also active in politics – ran for state house once – lost the race rather dramatically, and is now is now happily serving on the Matanuska Susitna Borough Planning Commission.

Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic. Daughter of Chinese immigrants, she is a Kundiman, Macondo and Lambda Fellow and has worked in the Asian American communities of San Francisco, Oakland, Boston and Riverside. Her work has been recently published in BorderSenses, Rio Grande Review, Quarterly West, Monday Night, Chroma and others. She is a co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Partner Abuse in Activist Communities, forthcoming from South End Press.

Fredy Romiero Campo Chicangana. Poet of the Yanacona Community of Sur-Oriente of the Cauca, Colombia, winner of the Nosside Unique Prix Global De Poesia, Italy, was born in 1964. His poems have been published by varied national magazines and newspapers and. He has participated in Festivals and Conferences in Indigenous Language and Poetry in Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, the United States, and Peru. His work, in the Ancient Inca language of the Quechua, Yanacona culture in "recovery of own language" and "songs of our people" and in "the Oralitura in the indigenous cultures in Colombia." He is a charter member of the Yanamauta group, "knowledge and saberes yanaconas." Books include: Taquinam Cuyaypa Manchachipak Huañuyman Songs of love to drive away the death, Ñuka Yanacona, Shimi Yuyaipas, I Yanacona, Word And Memory and Kinde Tutamanta Yaravi Nina the colibrí at night undresses and other songs of the fire. He is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology and former mayor of his pueblo.

Helen Cho, poet/writer/activist, was born and raised in Indiana and currently lives in Venice, California with her husband and twin daughters. Her poems have appeared in Field, Another Chicago Magazine, River Styx, Crab Orchard Review and Southeast Review among others. She also writes short fiction and even shorter tv commercials for progressive non-profit organizations. Helen Cho serves on the board of the Feminist Majority and the Ms. Magazine Advisory Board.

Eddie Chuculate's first book, "Cheyenne Madonna," was published in September by David R. Godine/Black Sparrow Books in Boston. Creek/Cherokee Indian from Muskogee, Okla., he has won a PEN/O. Henry prize and held a Wallace Stegner creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. He's currently a member of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he's obtaining an MFA.

James Cihlar is the author of Undoing (Little Pear Press), and his poems have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Quercus, Bloom, Minnesota Monthly, Northeast, The James White Review, Briar Cliff Review, Verse Daily, and in the anthologies Aunties (Ballantine 2004), Regrets Only, and Nebraska Presence (Backwaters Press). His reviews have appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and on the poetry site Coldfront.The recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship for Poetry and a Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, Cihlar lives in St. Paul.

John Damon, a generous and thoughtful colleague, served the UNK Creative Writing Committee as a fellow poet and writer. His mindfulness and fairness were considerate measures anyone in his presence would be moved by. His career in Language, Literature, and Linguistics brought him to Nebraska from Arizona where he studied the Tohono O’odham language and the work of Ofelia Zepeda, a brilliant poet/scholar, MacArthur genius, and Regents Professor at the University of Arizona.

Pauline Brunette Danforth writes about her resilient Ojibwe ancestors who adapted to the changing reservation and urban worlds of the Tentieth Century. Recent works are about her son born at the cusp of the twenty-first century who is learning Ojibwe ways. Her memoirs and poetry appear in numerous anthologies including Sister Nation, Traces in Blood, Bone & Stone, and Yellow Medicine Review. She has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota.

Jon Davis has published six collections of poetry, including Preliminary Report (Copper Canyon, 2010) and Scrimmage of Appetite, for which he was awarded a 1998 Lannan Literary Award in Poetry. He is currently working on Postcards of the Hanging, a collection of short fiction. In addition to the Lannan Award, he has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the G.E. Younger Writers Award, the Lavan Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and a fellowship to The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe for twenty years.

Lorene Delany-Ullman is a native Californian, and earned her M.F.A. from the Graduate Program in Writing at University of California, Irvine. She has recently been published in Elixir, Crab Creek Review, Washington Square, Versal, Harpur Palate, Upstreet, Identitytheory.com and Perihelion. She currently teaches composition and poetry at University of California, Irvine. She is one of the founding committee members of the Casa Romantica Reading Series in San Clemente, California.

Dr. Dana De Witt is a criminal justice professor with 20 years teaching experience. Dr. De Witt’s primary areas of research, presentation, and publication are youth gangs and domestic terrorism. Dr. De Witt is the associate editor for the journal, Paddlefish.

Haitian trade unionist Didier Dominique, representative of Batay Ouvrier movement, is an engineer, architect, artist, and co-author with his wife, Rachel Beauvoir, of a prize-winning book on Vodou as "the cornerstone of Haitian identity."

Kelly Madigan Erlandson works as a licensed alcohol and drug counselor in Nebraska and is the author of Getting Sober: A Practical Guide to Making it Through the First 30 Days (McGraw-Hill). She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2008. Visit her website at www.KellyMadiganErlandson.com.

David Allan Evans, poet laureate of South Dakota, was born and raised in Sioux City, Iowa. He is the author of eight collections of poems, the most recent being THIS WATER. THESE ROCKS. In 2009 he received the Governor’s Award for distinction in the arts. His poems, stories, and essays have been published in numerous magazines and journals, and in many anthologies. He lives with his wife Jan in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Gina Forberg is an elementary school teacher in Westport, Connecticut. She received her Masters of Arts Creative Writing at Manhattanville College. Her work has appeared in “The New Delta Review,” “The Mochila Review,” “Slant Magazine,” and other literary journals. She is currently a student at The Writers’ Studio in New York City.

Dr. Kate Gale is Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review and President of the American Composers Forum, LA. She was the 2005-2006 President of PEN USA. She is author of five books of poetry (her most recent, Mating Season, Tupelo Press), a novel Lake of Fire, and Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis. Her current projects include a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin with composer Stephen Taylor and a libretto adapted from Kindred by Octavia Butler with composer Billy Childs. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.

Crystal S. Gibbins is a PhD student in Creative Writing at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, specializing in International Human Rights and Diversity. She serves on the editorial board for Prairie Schooner and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize Series. Her work recently appeared in 20x20 (The Jackpine Writers’ Bloc 2008), Minnetonka Review, The Talking Stick, and is forthcoming in Red Weather. Crystal is Métis with Ojibwa, Scottish, and French-Canadian ancestry. She is from Lake of the Woods, MN/CAN. Her poem "Touring the National Museum in Prague"

Crystal S. Gibbins' "Touring the National Museum in Prague." originally ran in Yellow Medicine Review (Issue 6).

DIANE GLANCY is professor emeritus at Macalester College. Her 2009 books are THE REASON FOR CROWS, a novel of Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th century Mohawk converted by the Jesuits, SUNY Press, and PUSHING THE BEAR, After the Trail of Tears, University of Oklahoma Press. She currently is working on a new play, THE CATCH about the history of Native Education.

Sam Hamill is the author of fifteen volumes of poetry, including Measured by Stone and Almost Paradise, two dozen volumes translated from ancient Chinese and Japanese, and four collections of literary essays, including A Poet’s Work and Avocations. He was co-founder and Editor at Copper Canyon Press for 32 years and now lives in Port Townsend, WA and Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is founder/director of Poets Against War. "Eyes Wide Open" is from Measured by Stone (Curbstone Press, 2007) "True Peace" was first published in The Progressive

Lola Haskins has two books forthcoming in 2010: a collection of poems, Still the Mountain from Paper Kite Press, and Wild Angels, stories from fifteen Florida cemeteries from the U Press of Florida. 2007 saw a poetry advice book, Not Feathers Yet: A Beginner’s Guide to the Poetic Life (Backwaters Press) and a collection of fables about women-- images by Maggie Taylor-- Solutions Beginning with A (Modernbook). Her most recent poetry collections are Desire Lines (BOA) and The Rim Benders (Anhinga). Ms. Haskins teaches for Rainier Writer’s Workshop, a low residency MFA program. For more information, please see www.lolahaskins.com.

"The Sandhill Cranes" has previously been published in The God Particle and
anthologized in Snakebird (Anhinga Press)

Mary Alice (Woster) Haug grew up on a farm/ranch west of the Missouri River. She writes about her family, church and childhood on the South Dakota grasslands. After teaching in South Korea, she began to write a book called Crossing Borders: Discovering Myself in Korea, exploring the ways in which South Korea inspired memories of South Dakota. In the fall of 2008, she was an Artist in Residence for the Badlands National Park.

Born and raised in Detroit, Lolita Hernandez is the author of Autopsy of an Engine and Other Stories from the Cadillac Plant (Coffee House Press), winner of a 2005 PEN Beyond Margins Award. She also is the author of two chapbook collections of poems: Quiet Battles (Wayne State University Writers Forum) and snakecrossing (Ridgeway Press). Her poetry and fiction have been published in numerous journals. After over thirty three years as a UAW member at General Motors, she now teaches in the Creative Writing Department of the University of Michigan Residential College.

Poet Juan Felipe Herrera is a lover of experiment, hybrid genres and good flour tortillas. His poetry was sparked by his parent’s farm-worker corridos and flourished in the civil rights movement of the 60’s. In additional to his twenty-four published works Juan Felipe’s recent books are Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry 2009, and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments, which won the 2008 Pen National Poetry Award and the 2008 Pen/Oakland Josephine Miles National Poetry Award. He is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Department of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside.

http://www.juanfelipe.org

Eric Heyne teaches American literature and critical theory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and is currently serving as interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts. He has published poetry in Ice Floe, Alaska Quarterly Review, Big Tex[t], and elsewhere, and has published critical essays in journals including Modern Fiction Studies, Narrative, Western American Literature, River Teeth, The Northern Review, and Extrapolation.

Patrick Hicks is the Writer-in-Residence at Augustana College and his work has appeared in scores of international journals including, The Utne Reader, Glimmer Train, Christian Science Monitor, Virginia Quarterly Review, Natural Bridge, Tar River Poetry, and many others. He is the author of five poetry collections, most recently, Finding the Gossamer and This London (both from Salmon Poetry). He has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for a variety of awards, and he recently won the Glimmer Train "Emerging Writer's Fiction Award". Aside from being a Visiting Fellow at Oxford, he is the recipient of a number of grants including one from the Bush Foundation to support his first novel. He has lived in Northern Ireland, England, Germany, and Spain, but now lives in South Dakota where he enjoys watching thunderstorms roll across the prairie.

Jack Hirschman is the former poet laureate of the city of san francisco---2006-09---and the translator with the Jaitian poet Boadiba, of the first major bilingual volume---OPEN GATE---of Haitian poetry written in the Haitian language, published by Curbstone Press. I was invited to Haiti in 2007 for the centennial celebrations for the poet and novelist, Jacques Roumain, the youngest founder of a communist party in the 20th century---he was 28 when he founded the Communist Party of Haiti in 1934. My own major work is The Arcanes published in the American language by Multimedia Edizioni of Baronissi, Salerno, Italy.

Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) is an internationally recognized public speaker and author of poetry, fiction, and essays. Her two new books are Rounding the Human Corners (Coffee House Press, April 2008, Pulitzer nominee) and People of the Whale (Norton, August 2008). Her other books include novels Mean Spirit, a winner of the Oklahoma Book Award, the Mountains and Plains Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer; Solar Storms, a finalist for the International Impact Award, and Power. WW Norton is her publisher. Her poetry, The Book of Medicines was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other poetry has received the Colorado Book Award, Minnesota State Arts Grant, an American Book Award, and a prestigious Lannan Fellowship. In addition, she has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from both the Native Writers Circle of the Americas and Wordcraft Circle. Her nonfiction includes Dwellings, A Spiritual History of the Land; and The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir. In addition, she has, with Brenda Peterson, written Sightings, The Mysterious Journey of the Gray Whale for National Geographic Books, edited several anthologies on nature and spirituality, and written the script Everything Has a Spirit, a PBS documentary on American Indian Religious Freedom. Hogan has received the Mountains and Plains Lifetime Achievement award and has been inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. She has worked with Native youth in horse programs. A Professor Emerita from the University of Colorado, she is now the new Writer in Residence for The Chickasaw Nation and lives in Oklahoma.

LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Her fiction appears in numerous literary journals. She’s the award-winning author of novels, poetry, screenplays, and plays. Currently she is Professor in American Indian Studies, and English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

MC Hyland’s most recent chapbooks are Every Night in Magic City (H_NGM_N, forthcoming) and Residential As In (Blue Hour Press, 2009). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cannibal, LIT, Colorado Review, H_NGM_N, Fourteen Hills, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Minneapolis, where she works at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and runs DoubleCross Press and the Pocket Lab reading series.

Stephen Graham Jones has seven novels and two collections out there. The two most recent are It Came from Del Rio and The Ones That Got Away (both horror). Jones teaches in the MFA program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. More at demontheory.net.

Ted Kooser was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and served two one year terms, during which he founded a nationally distributed newspaper column, American Life in Poetry. In 2005 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his collection, Delights & Shadows, published in 2004 by Copper Canyon Press. He is a Presidential Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Greg Kosmicki, thebackwaterspress@gmail.com
Greg is the founding editor and publisher of The Backwaters Press. He had his first near-poetry experience as a young man when a bright light filled the room and he found he was hovering above himself watching himself write. A voice spoke to him and told him to go get more of the latte he was drinking, but he later discovered that it was just that his undershorts were too tight.

Alex Lemon is the author of Happy: A Memoir, and three collections of poetry: Mosquito, Hallelujah Blackout and Fancy Beasts. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas and teaches at TCU.

James P. Lenfestey is a poet and writer living in Minneapolis and Michigan. Formerly an award-winning editorial writer for the Minneapolis StarTribuine, he is the author of a collection of essays, numerous poetry chapbooks and four collections, SAYING GRACE (Marsh River Editions), TOOTHED AND CLEVER WORLD (TreeHouse Press), A CARTLOAD OF SCROLLS: 100 POEMS IN THE MANNER OF T'ANG DYNASTY POET HAN-SHAN (Holy Cow! Press) and INTO THE GOODHUE COUNTY JAIL: POEMS TO FREE PRISONERS (Red Dragon Press).

Dr. Rich Lofthus is a professor of history who has been at Mount Marty College since 1989. He specializes in the history of the 19th and 20th centuries, with particular interest in World War I. He also serves as the Faculty Athletic Representative for the college and enjoys displaying his landscape and sports photography. English 103:No Shoes Required

Judy Lorenzen hold a BA, English; MSED, Community Counseling (LMHP), and MA, Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska-Kearney. She teaches high school English and is a Fine Lines online editor, a past contributing writer for the Heartland Gatekeeper newspaper. Publications include The Nebraska English Journal, Nebraska Poet’s Calendar, Fine Lines, Times of Singing, 2009 Nebraska Shakespeare Sonnet Contest winner, 2010 Plains Song Review, and a poem forthcoming in Relief Literary Journal.

Bret Lott is the author of twelve books, including the bestselling novels Jewel and a Song I Knew by Heart. He has served as editor of The Southern Review, has spoken on Flannery O'Connor at The White House, and is a member of the National Council on the Arts. He is writer in residence at The College of Charleston, and lives with his wife Melanie in Hanahan, South Carolina.

Bojan Louis is a member of the Navajo Nation: Naakaii Dine'e; Ashiihi; Ta'neezahnii; Bilagaana. He holds an MFA from Arizona State University and works as a contractor and electrician. His poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review and his fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review.

Rick Marlatt holds two degrees from the University of Nebraska at Kearney, as well as a MFA from the University of California, Riverside, where he served as poetry editor of the Coachella Review. Marlatt's first book, How We Fall Apart, was the winner of the 2010 Seven Circle Press poetry chapbook award. His work has appeared in many journals and periodicals, most recently, New York Quarterly, Rattle, and Anti; and has been been nominated four times for a Pushcart prize. Marlatt writes poetry reviews for Coldfront Magazine, and he teaches English in Nebraska, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

Matt Mason has worked on U.S. State Department poetry residencies in Belarus and Nepal as well as won 2 Nebraska Book Awards. He lives in Omaha with his lovely wife Sarah and their 2 daughters.

BERNICE L. McFADDEN is the author of six critically acclaimed novels including Glorious (Akashic 2010), the classic Sugar, and Nowhere Is a Place, which was a Washington Post Best Fiction title for 2006. She is a two time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist for fiction, as well as the recipient of two fiction honor awards from the BCALA. Her sophomore novel, The Warmest December, was praised by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison as "searing and expertly imagined." McFadden lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is working on her next novel.

Copyright 2010 by Bernice McFadden. Reprinted by permission of Akashic Books, New York (www.akashicbooks.com). Publicity contact: Ben Fama at Akashic Books (ben@akashicbooks.com)

J. J. McKenna's poetry and creative nonfiction has appeared in more than 30 literary journals and mainstream magazines including Ideals Magazine, Hawaii Review, Midwest Quarterly, Louisville Review, Chaminade Literary Review, Concho River Review, and ELM. My poem "At the Japanese Gardens" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. McKenna teaches contemporary literature and creative nonfiction at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Lenelle Moïse, hailed “a masterful performer” by GetUnderground.com, is an award-winning "culturally hyphenated pomosexual" poet, playwright and performance artist. She creates jazz-infused, hip-hop bred, politicized texts about Haitian-American identity and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality and resistance. In addition to featured performances in venues as diverse as the Louisiana Superdome, the United Nations General Assembly Hall and a number of theatres, bookstores, cafes and activist conferences, Lenelle regularly performs her acclaimed autobiographical one-woman show WOMB-WORDS, THIRSTING at colleges across the United States. Curve Magazine calls her debut spoken-word CD Madivinez "piercing...covering territory both intimate and political...vivid and powerful." She shares a bed in Northampton, Massachusetts. www.lenellemoise.com

Carol Moldaw’s is the author of a lyric novel, The Widening, published by Etruscan Press, 2008, and four books of poetry, The Lightning Field (2003), which won the 2002 FIELD Poetry Prize, Through the Window (2000), Chalkmarks on Stone (1998), and Taken from the River (1993). Through the Window was also translated into Turkish and published in a bi-lingual edition in Istanbul. Her work also has been translated into Chinese. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Marfa Writer’s Residency, an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. Moldaw teaches in The University of Southern Maine’s low-residency M.F.A. program.

Professor Owen G. Mordaunt, Ph.D. (IU), teaches linguistics, TESOL, and Black short fiction at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is director of TESOL Certificates. He has published articles in various journals and three anthologies: Afrika Focus; Educational Studies; Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Studies; TESOL Journal, TESOL Reporter; Nebraska English Journal; International Studies Journal and Review; Black Lives; African History, Culture and Social Policy; Nation and Language: Modern Aspects of Socio-linguistic Development, Technologija, Kaunas, Lithuania.

Sharon A. Murphy is a student at Portland State University and has won several writing awards and contests. As a native Oregonian she enjoys hiking the mountain and coast ranges, travel and spending time with her husband and two cats. Sharon is pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and hopes to one day publish a book.

Glenn North is a poet in the MFA program at the University of Missouri – Kansas City and is currently the Poet-in-Residence of the American Jazz Museum. He is a Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow as well as a Cave Canem Fellow. Glenn provided the poetic narration for the award winning film short, May This Be Love and recently did a guest appearance on the popular ABC family drama, Lincoln Heights.

Jim Northrup 1.....I was born on the Rez, live on the Rez, will probably die on the Rez. T'was a lot that happened in between but it was just details. And from those details I make my stories.

2 .....I used to be known as a bullshitter, it is true. I know it is hard to believe but it is true. But being a bullshitter didn't pay anything so I decided to call myself a storyteller, a little better, more prestige. But it still didn't pay anything. I became a writer, a free lance writer. At first it was more free than lance but eventually I started getting money for my words. When I became an author, a poet, a playwright and a newspaper columnist I could charge consultant's fees. Anishinaabe from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan Christina Pacosz has been writing and publishing most of her life. Her chapbook Notes from the Red Zone, originally published in 1983 by Seal Press in their anti-nuclear series, is the inaugural winner selected by Seven Kitchens Press and reprinted in their ReBound Series, September 1, 2009.
http://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes from the Red Zone
She lives with her husband and their former street cat in Kansas City, Missouri.

Jim Peterson
Jim Peterson’s recent books have been published by Red Hen Press: The Owning Stone (poetry, 2000), Paper Crown (novel, 2005), and The Bob and Weave (poetry, 2006). His poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, etc. He has a chapbook, The Resolution of Eve, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He teaches in the University of Nebraska MFA Program and is Writer in Residence at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia where he lives with his wife Harriet and their beloved Welsh Corgis, Dylan Thomas and Mama Kilya.

Joseph Powell has published four books of poetry; the most recent is Hard Earth from March Street Press. He co-authored a book on meter in poetry called Accent On Meter. He lives on a small farm with his wife and son, and he teaches English at Central Washington University.

Bruce Pratt was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Award in fiction, and his poetry collection Boreal is available from Antrim House Books (www.antrimhousebooks.com) His fiction, poetry, essays, and plays have appeared in more than forty literary magazines and journals in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and Wales, and have won several awards. A graduate of the Stonecoast MFA at The University of Southern Maine, where he teaches undergraduate creative writing, Pratt lives with his wife, Janet, in Eddington Maine.

Jim Reese is an Associate Professor of English; Director of the Great Plains Writers' Tour at Mount Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota; and Editor-in-Chief of PADDLEFISH. Reese's poetry and prose have been widely published, most recently in New York Quarterly, Poetry East, Lips, Paterson Literary Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Connecticut Review, and elsewhere. His new book ghost on 3rd (New York Quarterly Books 2010) has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Reese has been the National Endowment for the Art’s Writer-in-Residence at the Yankton Federal Prison Camp since 2008.

Curt Richter was born in New York City in 1956 and has spent most of his life there. His interest in photography began with a Christmas present when he was twelve. At SUNY Purchase he received his BFA where he studied with Laurence Bach, John Cohen, Jed Devine, Jan Groover, Tom Gunning, Tal Steeter and Willard Van Dyke. In 1982 Curt began his career as a commercial photographer and started teaching in1989 while continuing his own art work. He has enjoyed a wide range of subjects, from Southern writers to NASA’s launch sites. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Royal Photographic Society, Victoria and Albert Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale and 42st Public Library Photography Collection. Among the grants and commissions he has received are a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, a Commission from Fellowship of Southern Writers, N. Y. State Council of the Arts, Artist In Residence and Guest Lecturer, TSKW, Key West, FL, Citibank Commissioned Portfolio. In 1997 he received a Fulbright Senior Fellowship to Finland. He now lives in Helsinki and divides his time between his two homes.

Curt is working on two new projects, "Gravitation", on NASA's launch sites and facilities at Cape Canaveral and "Still And All" which is a collaboration of photographic portraits and fictional biographies. Both are ongoing exhibitions and planned as books. Curt divides his time between Helsinki and NYC. Bret Lott collaborated with Richter in "Still Life." The subject was a portrait of Arlen, who actually retired from the NYC school system several yeas ago and now travels the continent in a Chevy van.

Kim Roberts is the editor of the online journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the new print anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (Plan B Press, 2010), as well as two books of her own poems, The Kimnama (Vrzhu, 2007), and The Wishbone Galaxy (WWPH, 1994). Her poems have been set to music by classical composer Darron Aric Hagen and to modern dance by Jane Franklin Dance Company, and have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Mandarin. She has been awarded fellowships at twelve artist colonies, and has published in journals beginning with every letter of the alphabet.

Kristina Roth earned her undergraduate degree from the University of South Dakota some time ago and recently completed her M.A. in English. When she isn't writing, she is attempting to make pottery, playing with her goofy wirehaired dachshund, or reading novels and essay collections. She and her husband currently live near Houston and visit the Black Hills whenever possible.

Matthew Shenoda is a writer and educator, whose poems and writings have appeared in a variety of newspapers, journals, radio programs and anthologies. He has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his work has been supported by the California Arts Council and the Lannan Foundation among others.

Shenoda's debut collection of poems, Somewhere Else (Introduction by Sonia Sanchez) was named one of 2005's debut books of the year by Poets & Writers Magazine and is the winner of the inaugural Hala Maksoud Award for Emerging Voice, as well as a 2006 American Book Award. His latest collection is Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone. Shenoda lectures widely and has taught extensively in the fields of ethnic studies and creative writing. Currently he is Assistant Provost for Equity & Diversity and Professor in the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts. He also serves as Director of Poetry for the Planet at the Wangari Maathai Center for Economic, Educational, & Environmental Design, a joint center with UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, where he is developing a curricular initiative that uses poetics as a framework to teach global sustainability issues to urban youth. Additionally, Shenoda serves on the Board of Directors of the Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts. He lives with his family in Los Angeles. For more information visit: www.matthewshenoda.com

Peggy Shumaker's new book of poems is Gnawed Bones (Red Hen Press). Her lyrical memoir Just Breathe Normally is now out in paperback from Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press. Shumaker lives with her beloved Joe Usibelli in Fairbanks, Alaska, and travels widely.

"The Run of Silvers" first appeared in The American Poetry Review.
"Spawn" first appeared in The Northern Review.
Creamers Field first appeared in Iowa Woman

Sam Stecher holds the title Dean of Students at Kearney High School. He participates in poetry slams on a sporadic basis as time and petrol finances will allow. IN 2007 Sam was selected to represent the city of Lincoln at the National Poetry Slam. He has in the neighborhood of 700 poems at his website WishingForFiction.blogspot.com. Sam would describe himself as prolific but not yet remarkable. He will trade you one of his poems for a functioning motorcycle.

Quincy Troupe is the author of seventeen books, including eight volumes of poetry, the latest of which is The Architecture of Language, recipient of the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement. He received the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award for Transcircularities: New and selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2002), selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of poetry published in 2002. He is Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and American and Caribbean Literature at the University of California, San Diego, was the first official Poet Laureate of the State of California and is currently editor of Black Renaissance Noire, an academic, cultural, political and literary journal published by the Institute of African American Affairs at New York University. He lives in Harlem, New York.

William Trowbridge’s poetry collections are Ship of Fool (forthcoming in February from Red Hen Press), Enter Dark Stranger, O Paradise, Flickers, and The Complete Book of Kong. His poems have also appeared in such periodicals as The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry, Boulevard, and Green Mountains Review. He lives in the Kansas City area and teaches in the University of Nebraska low-residency MFA in writing program.

Donna Vorreyer
Donna Vorreyer spends her days as a middle school teacher, trying to convince teenagers that words matter. Her work has appeared in many journals including Cider Press Review, New York Quarterly, Boxcar Poetry Review, DMQ Review, After Hours, and Apparatus Magazine. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. Finishing Line Press will publish her first chapbook Womb/Seed/Fruit in June 2010.

Miles Waggener
Miles Waggener is the author of Phoenix Suites, (The Word Works, 03) winner the Washington Prize; and Portents Aside, (Two Dogs Press, 08). His poems have appeared recently in Third Coast; The Pinch; Gulf Coast; New Poets of the American West, Helen Burns Poetry Anthology: New Voices from the Academy of American Poets' University and College Prizes, 1999-2008; Verse Daily, and elsewhere. He is a faculty member of the Writer's Workshop at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and lives in Omaha with the writer Megan Gannon and their son Manny.

Wang Ping was born in China and came to USA in 1985. Her publications include American Visa (short stories, 1994), Foreign Devil (novel, 1996), Of Flesh and Spirit (poetry, 1998), The Magic Whip (poetry, 2003), and The Last Communist Virgin (stories, 2007), all from Coffee House. New Generation: Poetry from China Today (anthology, 1999), she edited and co-translated, is published by Hanging Loose. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China (2000, University of Minnesota Press) won the Eugene Kayden Award for the Best Book in Humanities. In 2002, Random House published its paperback. She had two photography and multi-media exhibitions--“Behind the Gate: After the Flooding of the Three Gorges” at Janet Fine Art Gallery, Macalester College, 2007, and “All Roads to Lhasa” at Banfill-Lock Cultural Center, 2008. She is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council of the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bush Artist Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and the McKnight Artist Fellowship. She is associate professor of English at Macalester College.

Wang Xiaoni, born in 1955 in Northeast China, has over thirteen publications, including Selected Poems by Wang Xiaoni. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the 2002 Year Poetry Award of China and the Shanghai Literature Journal Award.

Rachel Jamison Webster is an Artist in Residence at Northwestern University. She won and Academy of American Poets Young Poets Prize and was recently honored by the Poetry Center of Chicago and the Poetry Foundation as an outstanding emerging artist. Her poems have appeared in many journals and her chapbook, The Blue Grotto, was published last fall by Dancing Girl Press. She edits the online anthology of international poetry, UniVerse, at www.universeofpoetry.org.

Don Welch has won seven poetry prizes in anonymous and open competition, including the Neruda Prize for Poetry, when judged by William Stafford. Among his books of poetry are Dead Horse Table (Windflower Press), The Keeper of Miniature Deer (Juniper Press), Carved by Obadiah Verity (The Press at Colorado College), Inklings (Sandhill Press), Gutter Flowers (Logan House Press), and When Memory Gives Dust a Face (Lewis-Clark Press).

He has been the Martin Professor of English and held the inaugural Reynolds Chair of Poetry at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Diane Wilson is a prose writer who uses personal experience to illustrate broader social and historical context. Her first book, a memoir titled, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (Borealis Books, 2006) won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award. Her work has been featured in the Fiction on a Stick Anthology (Milkweed), Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time, and other publications. She was recently awarded a residency at Hedgebrook Writers’ Residency.

Jim Wilson is an archaeologist and a writer. Aside from his work in cultural resource archaeology, Jim is writing two book-length creative works: The Journeyman, a memoir of learning archaeology in 1980s, civil-war Lebanon; and Recycled Resources, a collection of personal essays from his work in cultural resource consulting in the contemporary United States.

Alden Wood is a graduate student in English Literature at San Francisco State University. His research interests include postcolonial theory, poststructuralist discourses, ecocriticism, contemporary radical social movements, post-left political theory, and the intersection between literature and anarchism.

Katie Yates, Doctor of Arts, University at Albany, MFA Naropa University, BA Carleton College teaches literature classes on-line while parenting two small children and step parenting two teenagers, walking the dog and writing poetry/taking informal pictures of it all in Woodbridge, CT. She speaks French, grew up in West Africa, India and Turkey and considers a cabin near Priest Lake, ID to be her home. She is currently working on an electronic word/image book on Facebook including an essay on the value of social media and writing to be published by We Press in 2011.