Contributors

Brian Ames writes from St. Charles County, Missouri, USA. His work appears in several magazines, including North American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, The Massachusetts Review, South Dakota Review, Night Train and Wisconsin Review. He is the author of story collections Smoke Follows Beauty (Pocol Press, 2002), Head Full of Traffic (Pocol Press, 2004) and Eighty-Sixed (Word Riot Press, 2004). He is a fiction editor at Word Riot, and a former editor of Wind Row, Washington State University's literary journal.

Arlene Ang lives in Venice, Italy, where she edits the Italian pages of Niederngasse. Her poetry has recently been published in Mississippi Review Online, Eclectica, Verse Libre Quarterly, Poetry Midwest and Red Booth Review. Three of her poems have been nominated for the 1996 Pushcart Prize anthology.

Martino Balestreri was born in Cremona and grew up in San Giovanni in Croce. He started working as as pastry cook at the age of 15, and this job enabled him to travel around the world on board of holiday cruisers or to places where pastry exhibitions were held.

He now lives in Tuscany where he works for a famous pastry shop in Montevarchi. His passion for photography dates back from childhood, when he followed his cousin Carlo, a talented photographer. Only at the age of 20, he managed to buy his first reflex and started shooting everywhere and everything. Since 2002, he has been a digital addict.

His photos can be seen at Photo.net

Martin Bennett lives in Rome where he works as a translator and teacher at the University of Tor Vergata. Other work has appeared in Stand, Wasafiri Poetry Ireland and elsewhere.

Jane Blue's poems have been published in many magazines, most recently in the e-zines Blaze and Stirring; The Chattahoochee Review, The Montserrat Review, Poetry International, Antigonish, The Louisville Review and Spoon River Poetry Review, as well as in the anthology Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems about Marriage, Grayson Books, ed. Ginny Lowe Connors, 2003. She has two books of poetry, The Persistence of Vision, Poet´s Corner Press, Stockton, California, 2003 and Now that I am in the Light I See, Konocti Books, Winters, California, 1996. More information at www.macnexus.org/users/janeblue/index.html

Theresa Boyar lives with her husband and two sons in Helena, Montana, where she is currently working on both a poetry manuscript and a collection of short stories. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Samsara Quarterly, Wicked Alice, Rock Salt Plum, Rattle, Literary Salt, and The Florida Review. Her website: www.theresaboyar.com

Robert Bradley is an Alexander Technique teacher on Long Island. He's previously published in taint and has an ebook of short stories at Pulpbits.com. He's working on another one. There's a play produced a few blocks west of Broadway and a TV show that he doesn't want to talk about. He even published a book of poems entitled My Tender Feelings. But that was a long time ago.

Stephen Burt's poetry has appeared in Agni, American Letters & Commentary, Boston Review, Jacket, The Paris Review, and Thumbscrew, among other journals. He reviews new poetry frequently for a variety of publications in the United States and Britain, including The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Yale Review. His scholarly study, Randall Jarrell and His Age, appeared from Columbia University Press in 2002; his book of poetry, Popular Music (CLP/Colorado) in 1999. Another book of poetry, Parallel Play, will appear from Graywolf in 2006. Burt teaches at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN and, with his wife, Jessie, maintains a blog: http://www.accommodatingly.com.

Srinjay Chakravarti is a 32-year-old journalist, economist and poet based in Salt Lake City, at Calcutta, India. His poetry and prose have appeared in various publications all over the world. His first book of poems, Occam's Razor, received the SALT literary award.

Peter Covino, who was born in Sturno (AV) Italy, is currently a fellow in the Ph.D. Program in English/Creative Writing at the University of Utah. He is also the author of Cut Off the Ears of Winter, 2005, Western Michigan University, and Straight Boyfriend, winner of the 2001 Frank O'Hara Chapbook Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Columbia, The Paris Review, Verse, and The Penguin Anthology of Italian-American Writing, among other publications. He is also one of the founding editors of Barrow Street and Barrow Street Press.

Rosemarie Crisafi lives in Wappingers Falls, New York. She works in for a non-for-profit agency that serves individuals with disabilities. Her poetry has been published in Eclectica, The Surface, Facets, Poetry Super Highway, Wicked Alice, SubtleTea, Great Works, Red River Review, Millers Pond, Canopic Jar, 2River View, Nthposition, Rock Salt Plum, Tin Lustre Mobile, Poems Niederngasse, Astropoetica, Ancient Paths, Caught In the Net, and Experimental Poetry.com. Other poems have been accepted for future publication in Poetic Diversity, Locust Magazine, Promise Magazine and The Carriage House Review.

Francesco Di Vincenzo is an actor and teacher living in Italy. Since 1982 he has taken part in the most important productions at the Teatro Stabile in Catania. He has been directed by K.M. Brandauer, W. Pagliaro, L. Puggelli, A. Pugliese, and F. Zeffirelli, among others. In 1989, he collaborated with Ellen Steward from the Café La Mama, New York, to a project to stage The Seven against Thebes by Aeschylus . Since 1996 he has been collaborating as artistic supervisor for Teatro della Posta Vecchia, Agrigento; he has been teaching Performing Practice and Culture at The Academy of Beaux Arts in Catania for five years.

Aidan Andrew Dun has had two epic poems published in the UK by Goldmark, Vale Royal in 1995, Universal in 2002. His shorter poems have been published in many British and some European journals. Born in London but raised in the West Indies, he now lives in Hampstead, North London, Keats-country.

AnnMarie Eldon is an identical twin, evolved from cryptophasic origins in once densely industrialised Birmingham, England. Since September 2001, juggling various personae interiorae, US/UK homes and children, she endures relative domestic deprivation and hormones to achieve successful adult differentiation within the mediocrity of a picturesque Oxfordshire market town.

Her work is or will be at 5 Trope, mprsnd, Anemone Sidecar, Aught, Blazevox, Caffeine Destiny, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Carnelian, Conspire, Del Sol Review, Duct Tape Press, effing press, elimae, eratio, eScene, foam:e, Fire, Impetus, Junket, Lily, Locust, Megaera, Marlow Poets, Meeting of the Minds, Melic Review, MindFire, Mipo, Muse Apprentice Guild, Music eBook, Niederngasse, Numbat, Ophelia's Muse, Pedestal, Pettycoat Relaxer, Poets Against War, Poetic Inhalation, Poetry Kit Magazine, Projected Letters, PW Review, Rain Dog, Reflections 2003, Rock Salt Plum, Sentinel Poetry, Snow Monkey, Tears In the Fence, tin lustre mobile, Three Candles, Tryst, Verse Libre Quarterly, Wandering Dog, Writers' Hood, xPressed, xStream.

She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and is published by Anchor Books, Forward Press and Triumph House. She edits Web Del Sol's Writers Block and is contributing editor for Sentinel Quarterly. She features in the Women of the Web Anthology.

She currently experiments in Morse code haikus at www.annmarieeldon.blogspot.com

Debra Gingerich received an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. Her poetry has been published in Mochila Review, Red River Review, MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry, and others. Her article "Poets as Mentors" appeared in the December 2004 issue of The Writer's Chronicle. She lives in Sarasota, Florida, where she works as a writer for an e-commerce business.

Born in 1945, Ben Goossens' interest in photography and illustration started in highschool. Four years in Artschool (St. Lucas Brussels) was the next step. Illustration and photography became an obsession. He started in advertising as a designer for 1 year and worked as an Art Director the rest of his career--20 years in consumer advertising and 11 years in International Medical Advertising. Surrealistic painters were his source of inspiration in advertising and still are now.

As a member of a Belgian photoclub, from 1970 till 1980, he learned the darkroom and photographic techniques which he used very soon for experimental darkroom B&W images. He rejoined the photoclub in 1996 and is now sending digital-experimental photos to National and International Photocontests with success.

As an art-director he was suppossed to bring new creative visuals. At first with AD markers, airbrush or camera and later with Photoshop, the magic solution, no limits in phantasy. The style of his present photos is based on his professional past. If the image has no "saut créative," than it's missing something. There must always be an idea in his work. Either simple, more comical unreal or complex surrealistic. The idea is for him more important than the technique.

Hannah Holborn sails the west coast of Canada and is preparing to travel offshore with her family. Her fiction has appeared in Room of One's Own (issue 24:4 and forthcoming), Front & Centre, Words literary journal, Sights Unseen: New Writing from British Columbia and online in Literary Mama, The Quarterly Staple, The Beat, The Danforth Review, Identity Theory, Girls with Insurance and Cautionary Tales. Her fiction has also placed first in Surrey International Writer's Conference Writing Contest and first in the Cecilia Lamont Literary Contest. She is writing a novel.

David Hopkins currently teaches English at the Üniversity of Maryland in Bamberg, Germany, and works as an assistant editor at Lily Literature Review. His poems have appeared in Pierian Springs, Blue Monk Press, Into the Teeth of the Wind, 3rd Muse, Impetus, Banyan Review, Lily Lit Review, Rock Salt Plum Poetry Review and PoetrySuperHighway. He was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize, finished in the top ten percent of the 2003 Davoren Hanna poetry competition, was a finalist in the Dana Awards for Poetry, and was the winner of the spring 2001 American Counseling Association essay contest. He can be reached at dehopkin@faculty.ed.umuc.edu

An artist, disability advocate and former director of Missouri's parent training center, Pat Jones began writing after retiring on the Mendocino coast in 1997. With more time for art, she works in several mediums -- acrylic, clay, wood, cement, fiber, and most recently, Photoshop and words.

Robert Morris Kennedy lives in Tampa with his wife and two daughters. He is an editor with the St. Petersburg Times.

His poems are in current editions of the Tampa Review, Freefall, and Blue Collar Review. His work has also appeared in Willow Review and Samisdat, and one of his short stories was included in New Visions: an anthology of Florida writers.

Michael Kimball was the fiction editor at taint magazine and is the author of The Way the Family Got Away. His latest novel, How Much of Us There Was, was published in March 2005.

Dorothee Lang is a writer and net artist. She lives in an old house with highspeed connection in South Germany, where she edits the travel mag subside.zine and has web dreams on a weekly basis. Her work has recently appeared in Sunday Herald and Surface, Dublin Quarterly and Drunkenboat, Pedestal, and pi, among others. To see some of her latest pieces, visit her virtual gallery at http://www.blueprint21.de.

Sam Lipsyte is the author of a story collection, Venus Drive, named one of the twenty-five best books of 2000 by the Village Voice Literary Supplement, as well as a novel, The Subject Steve. His latest novel, Home Land, recently won the First Annual Believer Book Award. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in Queens with his wife and son.

Duane Locke, Doctor of Philosophy, English Renaissance literature, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities was Poet in Residence at the University of Tampa for over 20 years. He has had over 5,000 poems published. Over 2,000 were published in print magazines, such as American Poetry Review, Nation, and Bitter Oleander.

He is the author of 14 print books of poetry, and in 2002, added 3 E books, The Squids Dark Ink, From a Tiny Room, and The Death of Daphne. The entire Spring 2004 issue of the magazine Bitter Oleander is devoted to a 92 page interview with Duane Locke and includes sixty of his poems.

He is also a painter, having many exhibitions, his latest at the city art museum in Gainesville, Florida.

Giuliana Mammucari holds a Ph.D. in Italian Literature from Columbia University. She lived in the US for 37 years, teaching Italian Language and Literature at various universities and colleges in New York State. She is presently based in Rome, her native city.

Francesco Martini, born in 1951, has been shooting photos for about 25 years. He lives in Castel del Piano, in the province of Grosseto - Italy. He doesn't have any favourite kind of image, wants to photograph beauty. He likes digital, but also the traditional camera, slide e B&W, and prints the photos by himself in his dark-room.

Home page: www.martinifrancesco.net

You can see see his photos at Photonet

David Meskin likes to read books and then to tell people what he thinks about them. He has written reviews for taint magazine and other fine publications. He lives in a house in Baltimore that has really large rooms.

Howard Miller recently retired after 36 years of college teaching. He's now catching up on all that reading he wanted to do but didn't have time to before.

Catherine Moran is from Toronto, Ontario, and she works at a library there. Her short fiction has appeared in 3ammagazine (Oct. 2004 and Feb 2004) and her poetry has appeared in Taint Magazine, Elimae and Forget Magazine. She can be reached electronically at cathy999@sympatico.ca

A.J. Rathbun's books include Want, a poetry collection, and Party Drinks: 50 Classic Cocktails and Lively Libations, a drink recipe collection. He is an editor and co-publisher of LitRag, a Seattle-based literary and art magazine that has an online component at www.litrag.com, and he has his very own website at www.ajrathbun.com. Finally, his pie, "Totally Tofu Coconut Kareem Pie" won Most Creative at Amazon.com's EEPAPO (or, ETK-Edit Pro-Am Pie-Off).

John Rybicki's poems and stories have appeared Poetry, TriQuarterly, Bomb, the North American Review, Field, and others. He travels the land teaching children and adults alike about the holiness of a sentence. His first book of poems, Traveling at High Speeds (New Issues Press) went into second edition last fall. His chapbook, Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider, is out on March Street Press.

Henry Stanton has recently completed his fifth book of poetry, Love and Fear. He has published poetry in The Maryland Poetry Review, The Baltimore Sun Magazine, The Pearl, Late Knocking, and The Baltimore City Paper, among other publications.

Lynn Strongin has recently had accepted for publication next spring by the University of Iowa Press The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of Twentieth Century Elegy. Link to her bio: http://members.shaw.ca/stronginweb/Biog.html

Steven R. Thompson is a professional photographer living and photographing in the beautiful Southern California area. His main interest is in photographing coastal seascapes, but he photographs the more noticeable coastal tourist destinations as well. He has also spent time traveling and photographing nature and wildlife throughout much of the Western United States, most notably the national parks. His images are sold as fine art prints in select gift shops and retail locations throughout Southern California, through Webshots, the California Seascapes website and are also available for most any stock image use.

www.californiaseascapes.com

David Ubben exists and works in beautiful Geneva, Switzerland. It was a long and winding path that lead him there, through warm depths of South of the United States and the cool black forests of Germany. The lines of life and the tears of memories reach into his work. It is reflection of his past and a hope for the future. Please visit his website, "Slice of Being" at www.geneva.ch.vu

Derek White has other new work in Diagram, Potion, Tarpaulin Sky, BlazeVOX, Call: Review, perspektive, Eclectica and elsewhere. He has some chapbooks available from his own Calamari Press and edits SleepingFish magazine. "The Octopus Hunters" is from a pending collection of short prose taken from dreams entitled Poste Restante.