John Amen's debut poetry collection, Christening the Dancer, was released by Uccelli Press in March 2003. He has published poetry and fiction in various magazines and journals, including 2River View, Samsara Quarterly, Poetrybay, Three Candles, Sometimes City, and The Drunken Boat. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has traveled extensively as a performing musician, both with a band and as a solo act. A new recording will be released in 2004. He is also an artist, working primarily with acrylics on canvas. Further information is available on his website: www.johnamen.com. Amen founded and continues to edit the online literary bimonthly, The Pedestal Magazine. He has lived in New Orleans and New York, and currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Arlene Ang lives in Venice, Italy as a freelance translator and web designer. She also edits the Italian Niederngasse. Her poetry has recently appeared in Peshekee River Poetry, Tryst, Tattoo Highway, The Adirondack Review, Cordite and Scrivener's Pen.

Manja M. Argue was born in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1937. She moved to California in 1954 where she married and raised two daughters. She retired in 1992 from her position as a Computer Systems Manager at Pacific Bell. In 2000 she graduated from Humboldt State University in California with an interdisciplinary degree in Critical Thinking, Ethics and Communication. In 2002 she moved to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico where she is studying Spanish and writing both poetry and short stories. Her email address is manjaargue@hotmail.com.

Julianna Baggott is the author of three novels, Girl Talk, The Miss America Family and The Madam (all with Simon and Schuster), as well as a book of poems, This Country of Mothers (Southern Illinois University Press). Her work has appeared in dozens of publications including, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2000, Triquarterly, and read on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

Claire Bateman is the author of four books—The Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan), Friction (Eighth Mountain), At the Funeral of the Ether (Ninety-Six Press), and Clumsy (New Issues). She teaches at the Fine Arts Center, an arts high school in Greenville, South Carolina.

Stephen Blair completed majors in journalism, creative writing and philosophy at the University of Kansas. He wrote creative nonfiction for 10 years as a reporter for U.S. newspapers, including The Emporia Gazette and its quarterly, La Voz Latina. In 1999, he adapted The Odyssey of Homer for stage and directed a performance in Argentina with 150 children speaking ESL. He now teaches literature and theatre to ESL students at Universidad Nacional de Villa María, Provincia de Córdoba, Argentina. He has published in literary reviews, including the on-line journal Diagram, and has just completed a novella.

Gary Blankenship is a retired financial manager whose avocation is writing poetry. His work has appeared in several zines and a few paper mags in the USA and other countries. He edits the poetry pages of www.writershood.com, a zine and reviews for Sol, a poetry service site. He wonders if he is an editor with a poet rattling around inside or a poet with an editor trying to get out. He has taught, moderated, judged and otherwise likely screwed up his brother and sister poets.

Robert Bohm was born in Queens, NY. He is a poet.

Tim Bradford's poetry has appeared in Blackwater Review, Depths of a Greyhound Terminal, convolvulus and Flint Hills Review, and is forthcoming in Terminus and Runes. He is studying for a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University, where he is also working as the Associate Editor of Cimarron Review. Many of the leaps in "Edition" were products of his errant typing skills on an old manual typewriter, thus "happy accidents."

Christopher Buckley's most recent books are Star Apocrypha, Northwestern University Press 2001, and (with Alexander Long) A Condition of the Spirit: The Life and Work of Larry Levis, Eastern Washington University Press, Spring 2004. He teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the University of California Riverside.

Paula Cisewski’s chapbook, How Birds Work, was published in 2002 by Fuori Editions. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Conduit, Fuori, Swerve, Spout, puppyflowers.com, Spinning Jenny, and SHADE. She is currently a student in the MFA program at Vermont College.

Jim Daniels' most recent books include Show and Tell: New and Selected Poems, University of Wisconsin Press, and Detroit Tales, Michigan State University Press, both published in 2003.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada and also helps her husband, a retired wildlife biologist, with his field projects. My poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, West Branch and elsewhere. My latest collections are Lies of the Visible (Snark Publishing, 2003) and Harmonics (Poet's Corner Press, 2003).

Austin Hummell's first book, The Fugitive Kind, was published by the University of Georgia Press. He teaches at Northern Michigan University and is poetry editor of Passages North.

Like the narrator of her story, Sarah K. Inman still doesn't know much about automobiles and their many parts. A graduate of New York University and Colby College, she lives in New Orleans where she teaches English at Delgado Community College, writes, and performs still trapeze. Sarah is the fiction editor of the forthcoming Rive Gauche, a literary magazine. Her fiction has appeared in Cups, The Washington Square Review, Ellipsis, The Rogue, and Fell Swoop. She can be reached at bobcatinman@hotmail.com.

James Lineberger is a professional playwright and screenwriter. His rock opera, The Survival of Saint Joan has seen productions on broadway and at a number of regional theatres. Lineberger's screen adaptation of the Devery Freeman novel Father Sky was released by Twentieth Century Fox as Taps. His poetry has been published in Prairie Schooner, Exquisite Corpse, Hayden's Ferry Review, New York Quarterly, Verse, Hanging Loose, and many online zines.

Jack Martin is 30 years of age, and majoring in American Studies - Literature at the University of Kent, UK, although currently he’s studying abroad at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He’s also been published at various places in the English small press and on the internet, at Poetry Monthly, First Time, Eratica, Breakfast All Day, Quantum Leap, and the webzines Sentinel Poetry and www.wandering dog.co.uk.

Since her first highly-acclaimed poetry collection, The Great Frog Race, was published in 1997, Kristine O'Connell George has earned honors and praise for each of her seven books including the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, IRA Promising Poet Award, CLCSC Myra Cohn Livingston Award, Claudia Lewis Poetry Award, and the SCBWI Golden Kite Award. George has five new titles under contract including Hummingbird Nest: A Journal of Poems (Harcourt; 2004) which tells the story of the Anna’s hummingbird who built a nest and raised a family on George’s back patio. George visits schools, speaks at national conferences, and has taught children’s poetry for the UCLA Writer’s Program. When she isn’t writing, traveling, or watching hummingbirds, Kristine enjoys hiking, gardening, digital photography, collage and painting. You can learn more by visiting her award-winning website: www.kristinegeorge.com.

Eric Pankey is the author of six collections of poems, the most recent of which is Oracle Figures (Ausable Press, 2003). He teaches in the Master of Fine Arts Program at George Mason University.

Katherine Riegel's work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Gettysburg Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and, most recently, Crazyhorse. She currently teaches at SUNY Oswego.

Dana Roeser's first book, Beautiful Motion, is seeking a publisher. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, The Literary Review, Pool, Shade, descant, and others.

John Sandman teaches English at the State University of New York at Delhi. His short stories have appeared in West Branch, Northeast Magazine and The Ledge. sandma@delhi.edu

Julia Schaffer's writing has appeared in Cargoes, Hanging Loose, Rhode Island Monthly, and Shooting the Rat. Her plays, Hold the Floor and The Immaculate Basketball Game have been performed in Germany, Rhode Island, and New York City. Julia is proud to teach writing to children through NY Writers Coalition. By day, she supervises afterschool programs for the New York City Parks Department. Julia_Schaffer@yahoo.com

Elizabeth Skurnik’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shade, The Ledge, Artword Quarterly, and The New Delta Review. She is the recipient of an AWP Prague Poetry Fellowship, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Yaddo. She has taught in the undergraduate Writing Seminars of The Johns Hopkins University, and currently works as a freelance writer in Baltimore.

Currently, Brandon Thane Smith earns a living working as a chauffeur. Previously, he worked as a union laborer, a warehouse stock-boy, a beer store stock-boy, a bartender, busboy, dishwasher, dock supervisor, carpenter's helper, forklift driver, dirty magazine stacker, parachute packer (only rigged one total malfunction), mason-tender, house painter, lawn mower, dog bather, luggage salesman, paper carrier, the guy who straightens labels on wine bottles after the machine pastes them on crooked, the guy who stands by the turn of a rolling assembly line and keeps parts from getting stuck on the metal guard there, a US army paratrooper, and a telemarketer. akakavich@yahoo.com

Jake Vagus grew up in a town of 1800 in Eastern Iowa and graduated from Northwestern University in 1998. During that time he spent a year in Europe from 1996-1997 at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England where he edited the study abroad guide for North American students and traveled extensively throughout Western Europe and Morocco. In the summer of 1997, he wrote a weekly editorial and articles about the history of baseball and football in Dubuque County, Iowa for a local Iowan newspaper. After graduation he moved to Colorado to work as a correspondent in corporate America. Dissatisfied with his job, in the summer of 2000 he moved to Barcelona, Spain where he earned the Cambridge CELTA degree for teaching English as a foreign language. With that degree (after a brief stint on a hog farm back in Iowa) he left for South America and stayed for a year, traveling and making ends meet as an English teacher at various institutes including La Universidad de Católica in Santiago de Chile. He is currently seeking representation for a novel he wrote based on the experience. Since the fall of 2001 he has been working towards a PhD in neuroscience at Purdue University. This has been his first attempt at publication of his fiction or poetry.

Ivan Waters was born in the north of England, where he still lives. After studying English, he took up social work. For the past 8 years he has worked in the Child Protection field. As a student he had 'one or two' poems published in small British magazines. He has an strong interest in visual arts too, particularly in work which combines language and images.

Born and raised in Seattle, Teresa White now lives in eastern Washington with her husband and cats. She divides her time between writing and watercolor painting. During the past three years, she has had over 200 poems published online and in print including: The Best of Melic anthology, Rattle, Snow Monkey, Blue Moon Review, Poet’s Canvas, Thunder Sandwich, In Posse Review, The Rose and Thorn, Eye Dialect, Stirring, Tryst and Wicked Alice. You can reach her at whiteheart_1998@yahoo.com.

Jim Willis has an M.A. from Tulane in English and 2 years toward a Ph.D. at The University of North Carolina but has worked for the past 15 years as the director of a chemical dependency treatment center in a hospital in Tacoma, WA. Willis spent his childhood in Shreveport, LA. When his father asked him what he wanted to be, he said, "a writer," and his father said, "what else?" From his father’s tone, he was glad that he had not told him he secretly wanted to be a poet.

—COVER ART: Man with Headwound; Francis Bacon, 1955.—