Big Bridge #8

Bios

Alonso was born of Cuban parents in Bronx, New York on a cold November evening, just before the midnight hour. At the tender age of four Alonso and his family moved to a warmer climate and South Florida has been his home ever since. Alonso found his creative voice at the age of eight and has continued writing throughout his life. Having been influenced by the words and music of Jimi Hendrix, the attitude and rebellion of Sid Vicious, and the creativity and honesty of Ginsberg and Blake, Alonso's poetry is extremely diverse in theme and style. Alonso expresses himself not only with mere words, but also utilizes performance as an art form. He uses changes in tonality and sometimes even musical instruments to further showcase his art. Wallflower Publishing published his book “Self Portrait” in April 2001. In December 2002 he released his cd “Thought Criminal”. In the upcoming months there are plans for release of a cd book titled “Revolution #9 an Evolution of Thought”, a video compilation of performances at the Wallflower Gallery, several t-shirts including one in conjunction with the local clothing line “Revolution Wear”, and a web site. Alonso has been a featured poet at Power Studios, The Nest, and The Wallflower Gallery. He performed at the Def Poetry Jam showcase in February 2001 (Bruce George, executive producer of Def Poetry Jam says of him “Alonso is on purpose and on point”), opened for Doctor Mad Vibe/Angelo Moore (of the band Fishbone) in April 2001, was a finalist in the Lip Tongue and Ear Annual Grand Slam in 2001, 2002, and 2003, and also was a finalist for Slam Shut in 2002. He has shared the stage with other notable local spoken word artists including, Rashida Bartley, Melkisedek, and Diane Perez. He has been a regular poet at other venues in South Florida like The Warehouse Cafe, WVUM 90.5FM, Urban Sweets, The Ham and Eggery, Lip Tongue and Ear productions, The Marlin, Naked Earth, Natural Essence, Flow Fridays, Love Jones Revived. Through a project done in conjunction with the New World School of the Arts he has work that is being featured on the Miami-Dade public transportation system. He is a member of Lip Tongue and Ear, Body Mind and Soul, and the Spoken Word South Florida collective. He performed at Tobacco Road in January of 1999 and 2000 as part of the Medical Marijuana Benefit Concert to raise funds for Floridians for Medical Rights and is scheduled to do the same now in January 2003. He has done presentations at a variety of educational institutions including Florida International University, Miami-Dade Community College, and University of Kansas. In August 2002 he performed he performed at a local benefit for schoolbooks for kids. As a member of Body, Mind, and Soul, Alonso read at the Miami Book Fair in 1999, as well as the Yoruba Festival for Oshun, and various charity events and festivals throughout the community. Alonso's social conscious has kept him busy using his gift as a poet for the betterment of all. To get Alonso’s book “Self-Portrait”, his cd “Thought Criminal”, or for performance information you may email Alonso at alonsom@bellsouth.net.

Bruce Andrews as Musical Director of Sally Silvers & Dancers, has created compositions & live mixes of music & texts for a decade & a half of performances. Along with scores for improvising musicians and co-created multi-media theatre works, some texts from these collaborations were published in Ex Why Zee, one of over two dozen books of his published literary works - most recent is Lip Service (a reworking of Dante's Paradiso, from Coach House Press, Toronto). Northwestern University Press published his collected theoretical essays, Paradise & Method: Poetics & Praxis. Aerial's anthology of essays on his work came out recently in its Contemporary Poetics as Critical Theory series.

Louis Armand is an artist and writer who has lived in Prague since 1994, where he currently lectures on cultural theory and art history at Charles University and works as a freelance art consultant.

The first large scale solo exhibition of his paintings took place in 1999 at the underground Galerie Artnatur in downtown Prague, along with a sound installation by the Pazvuky Noise Project. His most recent exhibition took place at Galerie Gambit, in Prague, 17 October-22 December, 2002.

His poetry, fiction, essays, translations and reviews have appeared in various publications, including Poetry Review, Sulfur, Stand, TriQuarterly, Culture Machine, Frank and Van Gogh’s Ear. His work has also appeared in a number of anthologies, including Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets (Sydney, 2001).

His books include Séances (Prague, 1998); The Viconian Paramour (New York, 1998); Erosions (Sydney, 1999); Anatomy Lessons (New York, 1999); Base Materialism (New York, 2000); Inexorable Weather (London, 2001); Land Partition (Melbourne, 2001); Strange Attractors (Cambridge, 2003); Mimo Provoz (Cambridge, 2003); and a volume of experimental prose, The Garden (Cambridge, 2001). He has also authored, edited or co-edited a large number of theoretical texts, including volumes on contemporary poetics, media and aesthetics.

Bill Berkson Bill Berkson is a poet, art critic and professor of Liberal Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute. His recent books include Serenade and Fugue State (both from Zoland Books, both available from SPD), and his 1960s collaborations with Frank O'Hara published by The Owl Press under the title Hymns of St. Bridget and Other Writings. A selection of his art writings, The Sweet Singer of Modernism, is forthcoming from Qua Books in Fall 2003.

John Brandi began publishing his poems and drawings while in South America in the 1960s. He has continued to travel, write, paint, teach, and give poetry readings (with exhibitions of his art) throughout the world. A new collection of poems,"In What Disappears," is forthcoming in April from White Pine Press, N.Y. Two more collections are in print from Pilgrim's Books in India: "A Question of Journey" (Asian prose) and "Full Moon, Empty Belly" (Asian Haiku) both available from Pilgrims Books.

Scott Brennan says: "In 1996 at the age of 29 I was reading an outdated book written in the early 1970s by a writer named John Fetterman called Stinking Creek that documented the then exceedingly impoverished and culturally isolated people of Appalachia, those beautiful, mysterious, but freaky inbred families, most of whom were descendents of heros from the American Revolutionary War who opted to take land after the fighting with the British ended rather than pay. While reading a chapter on religious snakehandling I was struck by what I can only describe as a vision, and I knew I had to at once draw what I had seen. I scavanged a handful of colored pencils from the junk drawer in the kitchen and went down into the basement so my wife (now X) wouldn't laugh when she saw what I was up to. In the corner of the basement as I drew all time disappeared, and I produced my first picture, "The Snakingest Man Alive." In the middle of the picture stands a man wearing purple coveralls and upon his face is a look of profound amazement. In his right hand he holds a squirming rattlesnake, and big silver stars circle above his head. The sky is a bright, burning orange, and upon the ground rests, inexplicably, a wedge of cool watermelon. A tree branch extends over the sence, thus providing the man with a little shade and peacefulness."

Nick Carbo is the author of two books of poems El Grupo McDonald’s (1995) and Secret Asian Man (2000). He has edited and co-edited several anthologies of Philippine literature including the ground breaking Returning a Borrowed Tongue (1996), Babylon (2000), and Sweet Jesus (2002). He has been awarded fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts (1997) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (1999).

Terri Carrion was conceived in Venezuela, born in New York, raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in Hollywood, Florida. She is working on her MFA at Florida International University where she edits Gulf Stream magazine. Other poems are forthcoming in Slipstream, Mangrove, Pearl and Hanging Loose.

Ira Cohen can be studied extensively at his Big Bridge tribute page.

John Colagrande Jr. is a silly rabbit who will never believe that Trix are for kids.

Clayton A. Couch (caubrey@sidereality.com) lives in Columbia, SC with his wife, Lauren, and his feline familiar, Gretchen. He is employed as a Library Specialist for Midlands Technical College, and is currently working towards an MLIS (Library Science) degree at the University of South Carolina. He has published poems in such places as Aught, Dark Moon Rising, Dark Planet, Dreams and Nightmares, EOTU, poethia, Speculon, Star*Line and Ygdrasil, and publishes sidereality, a speculative and experimental poetry web journal.

John Dufresne is the author of Louisiana Power & Light, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, and Love Warps the Mind a Little.

Denise Duhamel is the author of 13 books and chapbooks, the most recent of which is Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.) An assistant professor at Florida International University in Miami, she co-edited, with Nick Carbo, Sweet Jesus: Poems about the Ultimate Icon (The Anthology Press, 2002.)

kari edwards is a poet, artist and gender activist, winner of New Langton Art’s Bay Area Award in literature(2002), author of a day in the life of p. to be released by subpress collective (2002), a diary of lies - Belladonna #27 by Balladonna Books (2002), Electric Spandex: anthology of writing the queer text, Pyriform Press (2002), and post/(pink) Scarlet Press (2001). edwards’ work can also be found in Blood and Tears an anthology on Matthew Shepard, Painted leaf Press (2000), Aufgabe, Fracture, Bombay Gin, Belight Fiction, In Posse, Mirage/Period(ical), Van Gogh’s Ear, PuppyFlower, Vert, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Shampoo, Nerve Lantern, FIR at potz.com, muse-apprentice-guild, Avoid Strange Men, and The International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies.

Vernon Frazer’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Café Review, First Intensity, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Massacre, Moria, Shampoo, Sidereality and many other literary magazines. He has written six books of poetry. He introduced his longpoem, IMPROVISATIONS (I-XXIV), at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in Manhattan. Frazer has produced five recordings of poetry with free jazz accompaniment and appeared on several recordings with the late jazz saxophonist Thomas Chapin, including their duo release, Song of Baobab. Frazer’s collection of short fiction, finished as a finalist in the 1996 Black Ice/FC2 Fiction Contest. His most recent novel is Relic’s Reunions. He recently finished editing an anthology of Post-Beat poetry for publication in the People’s Republic of China. IMPROVISATIONS (XXV-L), the next sequence of the Improvisations series, and Commercial Fiction, a novel, are Frazer’s newest publications.

Robert Gibbons: After six print chapbooks published since 1981, and three chapbooks available online, his first full-length book, Slow Trains, & Beyond: Selected Work, will be published this fall by Samba Mountain Press, Denver. It will include work spanning over twenty-five years, including poetry, prose poems, and essays. He has work forthcoming from The American Journal of Print, The Drunken Boat, Eleven Bulls, In Posse Review, Janus Head, and La Petite Zine.

David Gitin is the author of THIS ONCE: NEW & SELECTED POEMS 1965-78 and FIRE DANCE (1989), both from Blue Wind Press. He co-founded Poets Theatre in San Francisco, produced radio programs on KPFA in Berkeley, and currently lives in Monterey, CA.

Yacine Hachani was born in Algiers, Algeria in 1960. He started to learn painting when he was eight years old at the Society of Fine Art of Algiers (Societe des Beaux Arts) and he's never stopped painting since. From 1977 to1983 he studied painting at The National School of Fine Art in Algiers (Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts). From 1983 to 1987 he studied at the Superior School of Fine Art in Algiers (Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts). After a few exhibitions in Algeria, he decided to try his chance in France, and moved to Paris in 1988. He showed his work in Paris, got good reviews, and came to New York every year, to try to find a way to live there. In 1996 he was able to move to New York, and has had several successful exhibitions there. He can be reached at onad56@yahoo.com.

Lyn Hejinian's most recently published books are Slowly (Tuumba Press), The Language of Inquiry (a collection of essays, published by the University of California Press), and A Border Comedy (Granary Books). She is the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets. Other collaborative projects include Qúê Trân with music by John Zorn and text by Hejinian, a mixed media book entitled The Traveler and the Hill and the Hill created with the painter Emilie Clark, and the award-winning experimental documentary film Letters Not About Love, directed by Jacki Ochs.

Michael Heller is a poet, essayist and critic. Among his many books are Conviction=s Net of Branches, In The Builded Place, Wordflow and Living Root: A Memoir. He wrote the libretto for the recently performed opera, Benjamin, based on the life of Walter Benjamin. His awards include the NEH Poet/Scholar grant, the Di Castagnola Prize and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. He was born in 1937 in New York City and lived in the Miami area for most of his childhood and early teens. Forthcoming in 2003 is Exigent Futures: New and Selected Poems from Salt Publishers.

Michael Hettich holds a Ph.D in English and American literature from the University of Miami. Since 1990 he has taught composition, creative writing, and literature at M-DCC (Wolfson). In 1987 he was awarded the Mac Smith Endowed Teaching Chair. He is the author of eight collections of poetry.

Other reviews by Tom Hibbard can be read on-line at 'Jacket' issue 21 and 'Milk' issue 4. His most recent book of poetry is 'gessom', a chapter of which appears on-line at 'Jack' magazine.

Anselm Hollo was born in Helsinki, Finland, and was educated there and in the U.S. (senior year in high school on an exchange scholarship). In his early twenties, he left Finland to live and work as a writer and translator, first in Germany and Austria, then in London, where he was employed by the BBC's European Services from 1958 to 1967. Translations into Finnish from that time include Allen Ginsberg's Howl and John Lennon's In His Own Write.

For the last 36 years, Hollo has lived in the United States, teaching creative writing and literary translation at numerous colleges and universities, including SUNY Buffalo, The University of Iowa, and The University of Colorado. He has read his work, lectured, and conducted workshops at universities and colleges, art museums and galleries, literary conferences, coffeehouses, and living rooms.

He is now a Professor in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, a Buddhist-inspired nonsectarian liberal arts college in Boulder, Colorado. From the Naropa catalogue: "A lifelong associate of the Beat, Black Mountain, New York (I and II), and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E schools of U.S. American Poetry (and a founding member of the more esoteric 'schools' of Actualism and Continualism), I hope to convey to younger writers the amazing variety and strength of the writing (both poetry and prose) that has emerged from those quarters in the past fifty-odd years. This body of work represents the United States' true contribution to modern and postmodern world literature, and it exists, to this day, in glorious independence from what poet/essayist Charles Bernstein has called the 'official verse culture.' My aim is to acquaint younger writers with this vigorous, multifarious, rhizomic tradition of U.S. American writing."

Hollo has published more than thirty-five books and chapbooks of his poetry, most recently Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: Selected Poems 1965-2000 (Coffee House Press). He has also translated many contemporary Finnish poets, among them Paavo Haavikko (Selected Poems 1949-1988, Carcanet Press, 1991) and Pentti Saarikoski (Trilogy, La Alameda / University of New Mexico Press, 2003) as well as fiction, plays, and poetry (by Bertolt Brecht, Paul Klee, Jean Genet, Aleksandr Blok, Louis Malle) from the German, French, Swedish, and Finnish.

Hollo's honors and awards include the New York State Creative Artists' Public Service Award (1976), a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Poet's Fellowship (1979), the P.E.N./American-Scandinavian Foundation Award for Poetry in Translation (1981), the American-Scandinavian Foundation Award for Poetry in Translation (1989), Fund for Poetry Awards for Contributions to Contemporary Poetry (1989, 1991), The Finnish Government Prize for Translation of Finnish Literature (1996), and a Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry 1995-1996 (1996).

RhondaK resides with Oskar the Luv pug where she finds joy with a blow-up Kayak.

Jonathan Kane was born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1957. He studied art at the University of Florida and San Francisco Art Institute. The artist currently resides in Naples, FL, with his dog Otis. He can be contacted at mrsqeeze@aol.com

Anthony Kaufman: (anthonykaufman@yahoo.com) is a New York-based film journalist, playwright and shorts filmmaker. He can be read often in the Village Voice, indieWIRE, Time Out New York, SOMA and RES magazines. He is also the editor of "Steven Soderbergh: Interviews" (University Press of Mississippi).

Cralan Kelder's poems are recent/ forthcoming in Black Bear Review, Xconnect, 580 Split, Snow Monkey, Augustus Truhn's Magazine, Sundog, Drought, and Fishdrum. He has recently finished a stint in grad school and is between identities.

Donna Kuhn has published her poems in over 50 journals and anthologies including Santa Clara Review, Poetry New York, Red Dirt, fuel, forms and Poesy. Her poetry has been choreographed by Natica Angillys’ Poetic Dance Theater and is incorporated into her own dance, visual art, found sound collage tapes and video.

Michael Largo has published a book of poetry, Nails In Soft Wood (Pikadilly Press) and two novels, Southern Comfort (New Earth Books) and most recently, Lies Within (Tropical Press). His new book, Death Counts, is scheduled for release in fall 2003 by W.W. Norton.

Louise Landes Levi was born in NYC, studied at Berkeley, and travels overland to India. She's a student of Indian music. Her first chapbook, Poems (Ambrosial Press), was published in Bombay; others followed in Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Brooklyn. She published 2 cassettes--Padma & Kinnari--and 13 books & chaps, most recently Guru Punk & CHORMA (with Italian translation). See www.portodeisanti@portodeisanti.org. Forthcoming are Makar/A kar'MA, Woodbine Pr. Translator of R.DAumal, RASA, H.Michaux Toward Totality & Mira Bai, Sweet on My Lips. Recently, she published Ninth Street & Avenue A, for MM. Shivastan editions, 54 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY or c/o shivastan@hotmail.com or lllevi32@hotmail.com.

Susan Maurer’s work has appeard in a number of publications such as American Voice, Virginia Quartely Review, Gare du Nord, and Orbis.

Amy Evans McClure's complete resume as a visual artist can be seen in our archives.

Michael McClure, a founding member of the Beat Generation, is noted for he popularity of his dynamic poetry readings. At the age of twenty-two he gave his first poetry reading at the Six Gallery, in the event that began the Beat Generation and the San Francisco poetry scene. Michael McClure is more active than ever, performing his poetry in venues as diverse as the The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, N.Y.U., The Bottom Line, and the Iron Horse Coffee house.

"The Los Angeles Times characterized McClure as "The role model for Jim Morrison." McClure's music sources range from Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk, to the rock with which his poetry performances frequently share a bill. McClure's own songs include Mercedes Benz, popularized by Janis Joplin.

For years McClure has been working with his friend The Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek. They play clubs, colleges and festivals like the Jack Kerouac Festival, and TV appearances on the shows of David Sanborn and Dennis Miller. The Poetry Flash described one of the poet's readings: "McClure-dressed in black---stood and uttered his words with a sort of sultry precision. His gestures punctuated his words, enthralling, enlisting a dynamic tension between audience and performer that didn't let up till the words stopped."

McClure is features in several films, among the Scorcese's Last Waltz, and Beyond The Law by Norman Mailer. McClure is the author of the prize-winning and scandal-provoking play The Beard which was arrested by the police fourteen nights in a row in Los Angeles. He is an accomplished novelist hailed by the New York Times. McClure has written the autobiography of his Hell's Angel friend, Freewheelin Frank Secretary of the Angels and the afterword to Jim Morrison's biography, as well as the text for Dennis Hopper's book of photographs.

McClure has published three new books of poetry: Touching the Edge, Huge Dreams, and Rain Mirror.

David Meltzer is the author of (some say) too many books of poetry. The most recent collection is Arrows: Selected Poetry 1957-1992 [Black Sparrow Press, 1995]. During the 60s wrote erotica, actually devoted 1969 to writing 10 books which I classify as agit-smut. Orf was reprinted by Masquerade Books, 1993; The Agency Trilogy was reprinted by Richard Kasak Books, 1994; Under, a new fiction was published by Rhinoceros Books, 1995. Have edited many theme-driven anthologies; the most current is Reading Jazz (Mercury House, 1995) and am completing a companion volume, Writing Jazz, to be published later this year by Mercury House. Teach in the graduate Poetics and undergraduate Humanities programs at New College of California. Keep waiting for the guys from Publishers Clearing House to keep their promise to knock on my door (don't have a bell) and make me a millionaire.

Michael Moreth has curated exhibitions in Minnesota and Illinois. He has been in film exhibitions in Chicago, Michigan, and Ohio, and appeared in video exhibitions in Los Angeles, Washington state, Ohio, and Chicago. He has had photography exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Idaho, Iowa, Oregon, Detroit, San Diego, Paris, Conneticut, Norway, Australia, New Jersey, London, Seattle, Ontario, Japan, St. Petersberg, Netherlands, Massachusetts, Germany, Texas, Slovania, Prague, and throughout California, Japan, England and Italy. His art and digital art has appeared in Chicago, Stockholm, Minnesota, Ohio, Toronto, Atlanta, Sweden, Indiana, Portugal, and throughout England. He has been published extensively and won several awards for his visual art.

In July 2002, Sheila Murphy was a featured presenter for the Avant Two Symposium, sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus, Ohio. In 2000, Murphy presented a series of readings and workshops at the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh-Barton, Devon, in the UK, in addition to performing at the third annual Boston Poetry Conference. In 1999, she was a featured performer at the annual Brisbane Writers Festival in Queensland, Australia. Murphy has authored numerous books of poetry, including most recently The Stuttering of Wings (Stride Press, UK, 2002), Heresiarch (Xtant/Anabasis, 2002), Immersion Tones (Luna Bisonte Prods Press. 2000), and The Indelible Occasion (Potes & Poets Press, 2000). Books scheduled for publication include Green Tea with Ginger (Potes & Poets Press). She and Beverly Carver co-founded the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series and served as coordinators for 12 years. In 1996, Murphy’s Letters to Unfinished J. won the New American Poetry Series Open Competition. The book will appear from Green Integer Press.

A lifelong nonacademic, Rodney Nelson has worked as licensed psychiatric technician, copy editor, and librarian. His poems and narratives have seen print often enough. He made a cameo appearance in the fifty-fourth edition of Who's Who in America. Now Nelson seems to be finding new life in the ezines. A novel, Harvestman, is to to be e-published this fall."

Kevin Opstedal: Born and raised in Venice, California, editor of numerous sub-radar poetry journals and author of 12 books of poetry including the recently published chapbooks Variable High Cloudiness (The Dozens, Santa Ynez, CA), 9th & Ocean (Auguste Press, San Francisco, CA) and Next to Dreaming, or The Phone Never Rang (Angry Dog, Colorado Springs, CO). "A retired US Army colonel at a reading I gave in La Jolla said that I had eyes crazed by a thousand years of killing whales. I took it as a compliment."

photo by Jon Bidwell Simon Pettet is an English-born poet, long-time resident of New York's Lower East Side. His Selected Poems is still available from Talisman House. He is also the author of two classic collaborations with photographer-filmmaker, Rudy Burckhardt, Conversations About Everything and Talking Pictures. He also compiled and edited The Selected Art Writings of James Schuyler for Black Sparrow . A limited edition, Abundant Treasures (poems accompanying hand-colored drawings by New York artist Duncan Hannah), was recently published by Granary Books.

Wanda Phipps is a poet, journalist, dramaturg and translator. She is the author of the CD-Rom, Zither Mood (Faux Press), and the books Lunch Poems (Boog Literature), Your Last Illusion or Break Up Sonnets (Situations) and After the Mishap (Faux Press). She’s also the co-author of Shanar: The Dedication of a Buryat Shaman (Parabola). Her poems have appeared in over sixty journals including Agni, Exquisite Corpse, The World, Hanging Loose, Long Shot, and the webzines How2, readme, milkmag, Jack, $lavery: Cyberzine of the Arts, Isibongo, The East Village, Shampoo and Brooklyn Review Online.

James Reidel was educated at Columbia and Rutgers universities. He has published poems in The New Yorker, Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Ironwood, Verse, The New Criterion, and numerous other journals—including such online publications as the Cortland Review, Disquieting Muses, and The Adirondack Review. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first book of verse, My Window Seat for Arlena Twigg and other poems. His translations of the poetry of Thomas Bernhard and Ingeborg Bachmann have also been widely published—and his echapbook of Franz Werfel’s poems, The World Other (2002) is featured in Slope.org 14. Mr. Reidel is also the author of the forthcoming biography Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees, which will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in early 2003.

Tracy Rubert holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’Workshop. Her work has most recently appeared in Whiskey Island Quarterly as the first place winner of their annual short fiction awards. She has taught writing and literature at the University of Iowa, Cuesta College and Allen Hancock College. Currently, she resides in Orange County, CA where she works as a freelance editor and go-go dancer.

Leslie Scalapino's novel, DAHLIA'S IRIS -- SECRET AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FICTION, will be published in fall 2003 by FC2. Her ZITHER AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY will be published by Wesleyan University Press in May 2003.

Maureen Seaton's latest collection is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press. She is also the author of Little Ice Age (Invisible Cities Press, 2001) and Furious Cooking (Iowa, '96), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Award; and co-author, with Denise Duhamel, of Exquisite Politics, (Tia Chucha Press, '97), Oyl (Pearl Editions, 2000), and Little Novels (Pearl Editions, 2002.) She is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, Illinois Arts Council grant, and the Pushcart; and is currently Director of Creative Writing at the University of Miami.

As the author of Monster Zero, Jay Snodgrass is the cow's third stomach. He lives like a mouse in the walls where the wind can't reach. He crams hand fulls of cats and dogs into his pockets, secretly, when he leaves the store and he loves his tiny dancer.

Kristine Snodgrass is an MFA student at University of Miami where she teaches creative writing and is the poetry editor for Mangrove magazine. She is currently working on her first book, a collection of collage and persona poems. Kristine lives in Miami, FL with her husband Jay. Kristine and Jay coordinate the monthly Luna Star Reading Series featuring up and coming writers from the Miami area. They had their first child in January 2003!

Terese Svoboda is the author of four poetry collections. All Aberration, (University of Georgia, 1985) was nominated as an ALA Notable Book. Laughing Africa (University of Iowa, 1990) won the Iowa Prize. Excerpted in the NY Times Book Review, Mere Mortals was published by the University of Georgia in 1995. Treason was published in 2002 by Zoo Press. She has also authored three books of prose and one of translation. In 1995 her novel Cannibal (NYU Press) won the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award and the Great Lakes New Writers Award. SPIN magazine chose it as one of the best books of the year. Her second novel, A Drink Called Paradise, (Counterpoint Press,1999) was chosen one of the ten best books of the season by the Voice Literary Supplement. The New York Times called Trailer Girl and Other Stories (Counterpoint, 2001) "a book of genuine grace and beauty." Clean the Crocodile's Teeth, translations from the Nuer, was published by Greenfield Review Press in 1990, and was selected by Rosellen Brown for the "Writer's Choice" column in the New York Times Book Review. Svoboda is Visiting Poet for Spring 2003 at the University of Miami.

Lakey Teasdale, born U S A in 1948 now lives on the island of South Ronaldsay, Orkney in the village of St Margaret's Hope, at 58 ° 53 min north. 3 ° 4 min west.

Please choose one:

1. Mike Topp fell in love with a tuna but he could never fulfill his love because the tuna was so big and Mike Topp was so small. He also experienced long-standing occupational difficulties. His new book, HAPPY ENDING, from futuretensebooks.com, is available at amazon.com and powells.com.

2. Mike Topp was born in Washington, D.C. He is currently living in New York City unless he has died or moved. His new book, HAPPY ENDING, from futuretensebooks.com, is available at amazon.com and powells.com.

Laura Valeri received her MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and her MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. Her book of short stories titled The Kind Of Things Saints Do (University of Iowa Press) won the 2002 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Gulfstream, USA Today, Infinite Race and The Ruben's Quarterly. She lives in Hallandale, Florida.

Ginny Wray's poetry and creative autobiography have appeared in Absinthe, Brevity, Carve Magazine, Eclectica, Eyeshot, Hope Magazine, Linnaean Street, nycBigCityLit, Pindeldyboz, PoetryBay, PoetryMagazine, and Samsara Quarterly. She has a B.A. in Literature, and is on the editorial board of Fictionline.

photo by Lauren Young Mark Young was born in Hokitika, New Zealand in 1941. First poems published at age 17, & subsequent work appeared in many N.Z. & Australian journals over the next decade & a half. Gave up writing - or was given up by it - around 1975.

Was brought back into it by a request for permission to include a number of poems in the anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand poems 1960-1975 which appeared in 2000. Looked at his work again, liked what he saw. Was further enthused by the publication of a collection of his early poems - The right foot of the giant, published by Bumper Books in 1999 - & started writing again.

Recent work has appeared both in print & online in, amongst other places, Jacket, brief, Poetry NZ, Shampoo & Sidereality. Links to his online work can be found on the New Zealand electronic poetry centre website at http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/misc/online.ptml#Y

Has lived in Sydney, Australia since 1969.

	Alonso was born of Cuban parents in Bronx, New York on a cold November evening, just before the midnight hour. At the tender age of four Alonso and his family moved to a warmer climate and South Florida has been his home ever since. Alonso found his creative voice at the age of eight and has continued writing throughout his life. Having been influenced by the words and music of Jimi Hendrix, the attitude and rebellion of Sid Vicious, and the creativity and honesty of Ginsberg and Blake, Alonso's poetry is extremely diverse in theme and style. Alonso expresses himself not only with mere words, but also utilizes performance as an art form. He uses changes in tonality and sometimes even musical instruments to further showcase his art. Wallflower Publishing published his book “Self Portrait” in April 2001. In December 2002 he released his cd “Thought Criminal”. In the upcoming months there are plans for release of a cd book titled “Revolution #9 an Evolution of Thought”, a video compilation of performances at the Wallflower Gallery, several t-shirts including one in conjunction with the local clothing line “Revolution Wear”, and a web site. Alonso has been a featured poet at Power Studios, The Nest, and The Wallflower Gallery. He performed at the Def Poetry Jam showcase in February 2001 (Bruce George, executive producer of Def Poetry Jam says of him “Alonso is on purpose and on point”), opened for Doctor Mad Vibe/Angelo Moore (of the band Fishbone) in April 2001, was a finalist in the Lip Tongue and Ear Annual Grand Slam in 2001, 2002, and 2003, and also was a finalist for Slam Shut in 2002. He has shared the stage with other notable local spoken word artists including, Rashida Bartley, Melkisedek, and Diane Perez. He has been a regular poet at other venues in South Florida like The Warehouse Cafe, WVUM 90.5FM, Urban Sweets, The Ham and Eggery, Lip Tongue and Ear productions, The Marlin, Naked Earth, Natural Essence, Flow Fridays, Love Jones Revived. Through a project done in conjunction with the New World School of the Arts he has work that is being featured on the Miami-Dade public transportation system. He is a member of Lip Tongue and Ear, Body Mind and Soul, and the Spoken Word South Florida collective. He performed at Tobacco Road in January of 1999 and 2000 as part of the Medical Marijuana Benefit Concert to raise funds for Floridians for Medical Rights and is scheduled to do the same now in January 2003. He has done presentations at a variety of educational institutions including Florida International University, Miami-Dade Community College, and University of Kansas. In August 2002 he performed he performed at a local benefit for schoolbooks for kids. As a member of Body, Mind, and Soul, Alonso read at the Miami Book Fair in 1999, as well as the Yoruba Festival for Oshun, and various charity events and festivals throughout the community. Alonso's social conscious has kept him busy using his gift as a poet for the betterment of all. To get Alonso’s book “Self-Portrait”, his cd “Thought Criminal”, or for performance information you may email Alonso at alonsom@bellsouth.net.

	Bruce Andrews as Musical Director of Sally Silvers & Dancers, has created compositions & live mixes of music & texts for a decade & a half of performances. Along with scores for improvising musicians and co-created multi-media theatre works, some texts from these collaborations were published in Ex Why Zee, one of over two dozen books of his published literary works - most recent is Lip Service (a reworking of Dante's Paradiso, from Coach House Press, Toronto). Northwestern University Press published his collected theoretical essays, Paradise & Method: Poetics & Praxis. Aerial's anthology of essays on his work came out recently in its Contemporary Poetics as Critical Theory series.

	Louis Armand is an artist and writer who has lived in Prague since 1994, where he currently lectures on cultural theory and art history at Charles University and works as a freelance art consultant. The first large scale solo exhibition of his paintings took place in 1999 at the underground Galerie Artnatur in downtown Prague, along with a sound installation by the Pazvuky Noise Project. His most recent exhibition took place at Galerie Gambit, in Prague, 17 October-22 December, 2002. His poetry, fiction, essays, translations and reviews have appeared in various publications, including Poetry Review, Sulfur, Stand, TriQuarterly, Culture Machine, Frank and Van Gogh’s Ear. His work has also appeared in a number of anthologies, including Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets (Sydney, 2001). His books include Séances (Prague, 1998); The Viconian Paramour (New York, 1998); Erosions (Sydney, 1999); Anatomy Lessons (New York, 1999); Base Materialism (New York, 2000); Inexorable Weather (London, 2001); Land Partition (Melbourne, 2001); Strange Attractors (Cambridge, 2003); Mimo Provoz (Cambridge, 2003); and a volume of experimental prose, The Garden (Cambridge, 2001). He has also authored, edited or co-edited a large number of theoretical texts, including volumes on contemporary poetics, media and aesthetics.

	Bill Berkson Bill Berkson is a poet, art critic and professor of Liberal Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute. His recent books include Serenade and Fugue State (both from Zoland Books, both available from SPD), and his 1960s collaborations with Frank O'Hara published by The Owl Press under the title Hymns of St. Bridget and Other Writings. A selection of his art writings, The Sweet Singer of Modernism, is forthcoming from Qua Books in Fall 2003.

	John Brandi began publishing his poems and drawings while in South America in the 1960s. He has continued to travel, write, paint, teach, and give poetry readings (with exhibitions of his art) throughout the world. A new collection of poems,"In What Disappears," is forthcoming in April from White Pine Press, N.Y. Two more collections are in print from Pilgrim's Books in India: "A Question of Journey" (Asian prose) and "Full Moon, Empty Belly" (Asian Haiku) both available from Pilgrims Books.

	Scott Brennan says: "In 1996 at the age of 29 I was reading an outdated book written in the early 1970s by a writer named John Fetterman called Stinking Creek that documented the then exceedingly impoverished and culturally isolated people of Appalachia, those beautiful, mysterious, but freaky inbred families, most of whom were descendents of heros from the American Revolutionary War who opted to take land after the fighting with the British ended rather than pay. While reading a chapter on religious snakehandling I was struck by what I can only describe as a vision, and I knew I had to at once draw what I had seen. I scavanged a handful of colored pencils from the junk drawer in the kitchen and went down into the basement so my wife (now X) wouldn't laugh when she saw what I was up to. In the corner of the basement as I drew all time disappeared, and I produced my first picture, "The Snakingest Man Alive." In the middle of the picture stands a man wearing purple coveralls and upon his face is a look of profound amazement. In his right hand he holds a squirming rattlesnake, and big silver stars circle above his head. The sky is a bright, burning orange, and upon the ground rests, inexplicably, a wedge of cool watermelon. A tree branch extends over the sence, thus providing the man with a little shade and peacefulness."

	Nick Carbo is the author of two books of poems El Grupo McDonald’s (1995) and Secret Asian Man (2000). He has edited and co-edited several anthologies of Philippine literature including the ground breaking Returning a Borrowed Tongue (1996), Babylon (2000), and Sweet Jesus (2002). He has been awarded fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts (1997) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (1999).

	Terri Carrion was conceived in Venezuela, born in New York, raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in Hollywood, Florida. She is working on her MFA at Florida International University where she edits Gulf Stream magazine. Other poems are forthcoming in Slipstream, Mangrove, Pearl and Hanging Loose.

	Ira Cohen can be studied extensively at his Big Bridge tribute page.

	John Colagrande Jr. is a silly rabbit who will never believe that Trix are for kids.

	Clayton A. Couch (caubrey@sidereality.com) lives in Columbia, SC with his wife, Lauren, and his feline familiar, Gretchen. He is employed as a Library Specialist for Midlands Technical College, and is currently working towards an MLIS (Library Science) degree at the University of South Carolina. He has published poems in such places as Aught, Dark Moon Rising, Dark Planet, Dreams and Nightmares, EOTU, poethia, Speculon, StarLine* and Ygdrasil, and publishes sidereality, a speculative and experimental poetry web journal.

	John Dufresne is the author of Louisiana Power & Light, Deep in the Shade of Paradise, and Love Warps the Mind a Little.


	Denise Duhamel is the author of 13 books and chapbooks, the most recent of which is Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001.) An assistant professor at Florida International University in Miami, she co-edited, with Nick Carbo, Sweet Jesus: Poems about the Ultimate Icon (The Anthology Press, 2002.)

	kari edwards is a poet, artist and gender activist, winner of New Langton Art’s Bay Area Award in literature(2002), author of a day in the life of p. to be released by subpress collective (2002), a diary of lies - Belladonna #27 by Balladonna Books (2002), Electric Spandex: anthology of writing the queer text, Pyriform Press (2002), and post/(pink) Scarlet Press (2001). edwards’ work can also be found in Blood and Tears an anthology on Matthew Shepard, Painted leaf Press (2000), Aufgabe, Fracture, Bombay Gin, Belight Fiction, In Posse, Mirage/Period(ical), Van Gogh’s Ear, PuppyFlower, Vert, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Shampoo, Nerve Lantern, FIR at potz.com, muse-apprentice-guild, Avoid Strange Men, and The International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies.

	Vernon Frazer’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Café Review, First Intensity, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Massacre, Moria, Shampoo, Sidereality and many other literary magazines. He has written six books of poetry. He introduced his longpoem, IMPROVISATIONS (I-XXIV), at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in Manhattan. Frazer has produced five recordings of poetry with free jazz accompaniment and appeared on several recordings with the late jazz saxophonist Thomas Chapin, including their duo release, Song of Baobab. Frazer’s collection of short fiction, finished as a finalist in the 1996 Black Ice/FC2 Fiction Contest. His most recent novel is Relic’s Reunions. He recently finished editing an anthology of Post-Beat poetry for publication in the People’s Republic of China. IMPROVISATIONS (XXV-L), the next sequence of the Improvisations series, and Commercial Fiction, a novel, are Frazer’s newest publications.

	Robert Gibbons: After six print chapbooks published since 1981, and three chapbooks available online, his first full-length book, Slow Trains, & Beyond: Selected Work, will be published this fall by Samba Mountain Press, Denver. It will include work spanning over twenty-five years, including poetry, prose poems, and essays. He has work forthcoming from The American Journal of Print, The Drunken Boat, Eleven Bulls, In Posse Review, Janus Head, and La Petite Zine.

	David Gitin is the author of THIS ONCE: NEW & SELECTED POEMS 1965-78 and FIRE DANCE (1989), both from Blue Wind Press. He co-founded Poets Theatre in San Francisco, produced radio programs on KPFA in Berkeley, and currently lives in Monterey, CA.

	Yacine Hachani was born in Algiers, Algeria in 1960. He started to learn painting when he was eight years old at the Society of Fine Art of Algiers (Societe des Beaux Arts) and he's never stopped painting since. From 1977 to1983 he studied painting at The National School of Fine Art in Algiers (Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts). From 1983 to 1987 he studied at the Superior School of Fine Art in Algiers (Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts). After a few exhibitions in Algeria, he decided to try his chance in France, and moved to Paris in 1988. He showed his work in Paris, got good reviews, and came to New York every year, to try to find a way to live there. In 1996 he was able to move to New York, and has had several successful exhibitions there. He can be reached at onad56@yahoo.com.

	Lyn Hejinian's most recently published books are Slowly (Tuumba Press), The Language of Inquiry (a collection of essays, published by the University of California Press), and A Border Comedy (Granary Books). She is the co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets. Other collaborative projects include Qúê Trân with music by John Zorn and text by Hejinian, a mixed media book entitled The Traveler and the Hill and the Hill created with the painter Emilie Clark, and the award-winning experimental documentary film Letters Not About Love, directed by Jacki Ochs.

	Michael Heller is a poet, essayist and critic. Among his many books are Conviction=s Net of Branches, In The Builded Place, Wordflow and Living Root: A Memoir. He wrote the libretto for the recently performed opera, Benjamin, based on the life of Walter Benjamin. His awards include the NEH Poet/Scholar grant, the Di Castagnola Prize and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. He was born in 1937 in New York City and lived in the Miami area for most of his childhood and early teens. Forthcoming in 2003 is Exigent Futures: New and Selected Poems from Salt Publishers.

	Michael Hettich holds a Ph.D in English and American literature from the University of Miami. Since 1990 he has taught composition, creative writing, and literature at M-DCC (Wolfson). In 1987 he was awarded the Mac Smith Endowed Teaching Chair. He is the author of eight collections of poetry.

	Other reviews by Tom Hibbard can be read on-line at 'Jacket' issue 21 and 'Milk' issue 4. His most recent book of poetry is 'gessom', a chapter of which appears on-line at 'Jack' magazine.

	Anselm Hollo was born in Helsinki, Finland, and was educated there and in the U.S. (senior year in high school on an exchange scholarship). In his early twenties, he left Finland to live and work as a writer and translator, first in Germany and Austria, then in London, where he was employed by the BBC's European Services from 1958 to 1967. Translations into Finnish from that time include Allen Ginsberg's Howl and John Lennon's In His Own Write. For the last 36 years, Hollo has lived in the United States, teaching creative writing and literary translation at numerous colleges and universities, including SUNY Buffalo, The University of Iowa, and The University of Colorado. He has read his work, lectured, and conducted workshops at universities and colleges, art museums and galleries, literary conferences, coffeehouses, and living rooms. He is now a Professor in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, a Buddhist-inspired nonsectarian liberal arts college in Boulder, Colorado. From the Naropa catalogue: "A lifelong associate of the Beat, Black Mountain, New York (I and II), and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E schools of U.S. American Poetry (and a founding member of the more esoteric 'schools' of Actualism and Continualism), I hope to convey to younger writers the amazing variety and strength of the writing (both poetry and prose) that has emerged from those quarters in the past fifty-odd years. This body of work represents the United States' true contribution to modern and postmodern world literature, and it exists, to this day, in glorious independence from what poet/essayist Charles Bernstein has called the 'official verse culture.' My aim is to acquaint younger writers with this vigorous, multifarious, rhizomic tradition of U.S. American writing." Hollo has published more than thirty-five books and chapbooks of his poetry, most recently Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: Selected Poems 1965-2000 (Coffee House Press). He has also translated many contemporary Finnish poets, among them Paavo Haavikko (Selected Poems 1949-1988, Carcanet Press, 1991) and Pentti Saarikoski (Trilogy, La Alameda / University of New Mexico Press, 2003) as well as fiction, plays, and poetry (by Bertolt Brecht, Paul Klee, Jean Genet, Aleksandr Blok, Louis Malle) from the German, French, Swedish, and Finnish. Hollo's honors and awards include the New York State Creative Artists' Public Service Award (1976), a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Poet's Fellowship (1979), the P.E.N./American-Scandinavian Foundation Award for Poetry in Translation (1981), the American-Scandinavian Foundation Award for Poetry in Translation (1989), Fund for Poetry Awards for Contributions to Contemporary Poetry (1989, 1991), The Finnish Government Prize for Translation of Finnish Literature (1996), and a Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry 1995-1996 (1996).

	RhondaK resides with Oskar the Luv pug where she finds joy with a blow-up Kayak.

	Jonathan Kane was born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1957. He studied art at the University of Florida and San Francisco Art Institute. The artist currently resides in Naples, FL, with his dog Otis. He can be contacted at mrsqeeze@aol.com

	Anthony Kaufman: (anthonykaufman@yahoo.com) is a New York-based film journalist, playwright and shorts filmmaker. He can be read often in the Village Voice, indieWIRE, Time Out New York, SOMA and RES magazines. He is also the editor of "Steven Soderbergh: Interviews" (University Press of Mississippi).

	Cralan Kelder's poems are recent/ forthcoming in Black Bear Review, Xconnect, 580 Split, Snow Monkey, Augustus Truhn's Magazine, Sundog, Drought, and Fishdrum. He has recently finished a stint in grad school and is between identities.

	Donna Kuhn has published her poems in over 50 journals and anthologies including Santa Clara Review, Poetry New York, Red Dirt, fuel, forms and Poesy. Her poetry has been choreographed by Natica Angillys’ Poetic Dance Theater and is incorporated into her own dance, visual art, found sound collage tapes and video.

	Michael Largo has published a book of poetry, Nails In Soft Wood (Pikadilly Press) and two novels, Southern Comfort (New Earth Books) and most recently, Lies Within (Tropical Press). His new book, Death Counts, is scheduled for release in fall 2003 by W.W. Norton.

	Louise Landes Levi was born in NYC, studied at Berkeley, and travels overland to India. She's a student of Indian music. Her first chapbook, Poems (Ambrosial Press), was published in Bombay; others followed in Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Brooklyn. She published 2 cassettes--Padma & Kinnari--and 13 books & chaps, most recently Guru Punk & CHORMA (with Italian translation). See www.portodeisanti@portodeisanti.org. Forthcoming are Makar/A kar'MA, Woodbine Pr. Translator of R.DAumal, RASA, H.Michaux Toward Totality & Mira Bai, Sweet on My Lips. Recently, she published Ninth Street & Avenue A, for MM. Shivastan editions, 54 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY or c/o shivastan@hotmail.com or lllevi32@hotmail.com.

	Susan Maurer’s work has appeard in a number of publications such as American Voice, Virginia Quartely Review, Gare du Nord, and Orbis.

	Amy Evans McClure's complete resume as a visual artist can be seen in our archives.


	David Meltzer is the author of (some say) too many books of poetry. The most recent collection is Arrows: Selected Poetry 1957-1992 [Black Sparrow Press, 1995]. During the 60s wrote erotica, actually devoted 1969 to writing 10 books which I classify as agit-smut. Orf was reprinted by Masquerade Books, 1993; The Agency Trilogy was reprinted by Richard Kasak Books, 1994; Under, a new fiction was published by Rhinoceros Books, 1995. Have edited many theme-driven anthologies; the most current is Reading Jazz (Mercury House, 1995) and am completing a companion volume, Writing Jazz, to be published later this year by Mercury House. Teach in the graduate Poetics and undergraduate Humanities programs at New College of California. Keep waiting for the guys from Publishers Clearing House to keep their promise to knock on my door (don't have a bell) and make me a millionaire.

	Michael Moreth has curated exhibitions in Minnesota and Illinois. He has been in film exhibitions in Chicago, Michigan, and Ohio, and appeared in video exhibitions in Los Angeles, Washington state, Ohio, and Chicago. He has had photography exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Idaho, Iowa, Oregon, Detroit, San Diego, Paris, Conneticut, Norway, Australia, New Jersey, London, Seattle, Ontario, Japan, St. Petersberg, Netherlands, Massachusetts, Germany, Texas, Slovania, Prague, and throughout California, Japan, England and Italy. His art and digital art has appeared in Chicago, Stockholm, Minnesota, Ohio, Toronto, Atlanta, Sweden, Indiana, Portugal, and throughout England. He has been published extensively and won several awards for his visual art.

	In July 2002, Sheila Murphy was a featured presenter for the Avant Two Symposium, sponsored by The Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus, Ohio. In 2000, Murphy presented a series of readings and workshops at the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh-Barton, Devon, in the UK, in addition to performing at the third annual Boston Poetry Conference. In 1999, she was a featured performer at the annual Brisbane Writers Festival in Queensland, Australia. Murphy has authored numerous books of poetry, including most recently The Stuttering of Wings (Stride Press, UK, 2002), Heresiarch (Xtant/Anabasis, 2002), Immersion Tones (Luna Bisonte Prods Press. 2000), and The Indelible Occasion (Potes & Poets Press, 2000). Books scheduled for publication include Green Tea with Ginger (Potes & Poets Press). She and Beverly Carver co-founded the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series and served as coordinators for 12 years. In 1996, Murphy’s Letters to Unfinished J. won the New American Poetry Series Open Competition. The book will appear from Green Integer Press.

	A lifelong nonacademic, Rodney Nelson has worked as licensed psychiatric technician, copy editor, and librarian. His poems and narratives have seen print often enough. He made a cameo appearance in the fifty-fourth edition of Who's Who in America. Now Nelson seems to be finding new life in the ezines. A novel, Harvestman, is to to be e-published this fall."

	Kevin Opstedal: Born and raised in Venice, California, editor of numerous sub-radar poetry journals and author of 12 books of poetry including the recently published chapbooks Variable High Cloudiness (The Dozens, Santa Ynez, CA), 9th & Ocean (Auguste Press, San Francisco, CA) and Next to Dreaming, or The Phone Never Rang (Angry Dog, Colorado Springs, CO). "A retired US Army colonel at a reading I gave in La Jolla said that I had eyes crazed by a thousand years of killing whales. I took it as a compliment."

photo by Jon Bidwell	Simon Pettet is an English-born poet, long-time resident of New York's Lower East Side. His Selected Poems is still available from Talisman House. He is also the author of two classic collaborations with photographer-filmmaker, Rudy Burckhardt, Conversations About Everything and Talking Pictures. He also compiled and edited The Selected Art Writings of James Schuyler for Black Sparrow . A limited edition, Abundant Treasures (poems accompanying hand-colored drawings by New York artist Duncan Hannah), was recently published by Granary Books.

	Wanda Phipps is a poet, journalist, dramaturg and translator. She is the author of the CD-Rom, Zither Mood (Faux Press), and the books Lunch Poems (Boog Literature), Your Last Illusion or Break Up Sonnets (Situations) and After the Mishap (Faux Press). She’s also the co-author of Shanar: The Dedication of a Buryat Shaman (Parabola). Her poems have appeared in over sixty journals including Agni, Exquisite Corpse, The World, Hanging Loose, Long Shot, and the webzines How2, readme, milkmag, Jack, $lavery: Cyberzine of the Arts, Isibongo, The East Village, Shampoo and Brooklyn Review Online.

	James Reidel was educated at Columbia and Rutgers universities. He has published poems in The New Yorker, Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Ironwood, Verse, The New Criterion, and numerous other journals—including such online publications as the Cortland Review, Disquieting Muses, and The Adirondack Review. He is currently seeking a publisher for his first book of verse, My Window Seat for Arlena Twigg and other poems. His translations of the poetry of Thomas Bernhard and Ingeborg Bachmann have also been widely published—and his echapbook of Franz Werfel’s poems, The World Other (2002) is featured in Slope.org 14. Mr. Reidel is also the author of the forthcoming biography Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees, which will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in early 2003.

	Tracy Rubert holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’Workshop. Her work has most recently appeared in Whiskey Island Quarterly as the first place winner of their annual short fiction awards. She has taught writing and literature at the University of Iowa, Cuesta College and Allen Hancock College. Currently, she resides in Orange County, CA where she works as a freelance editor and go-go dancer.

	Leslie Scalapino's novel, DAHLIA'S IRIS -- SECRET AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND FICTION, will be published in fall 2003 by FC2. Her ZITHER AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY will be published by Wesleyan University Press in May 2003.

	Maureen Seaton's latest collection is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press. She is also the author of Little Ice Age (Invisible Cities Press, 2001) and Furious Cooking (Iowa, '96), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Award; and co-author, with Denise Duhamel, of Exquisite Politics, (Tia Chucha Press, '97), Oyl (Pearl Editions, 2000), and Little Novels (Pearl Editions, 2002.) She is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, Illinois Arts Council grant, and the Pushcart; and is currently Director of Creative Writing at the University of Miami.

	As the author of Monster Zero, Jay Snodgrass is the cow's third stomach. He lives like a mouse in the walls where the wind can't reach. He crams hand fulls of cats and dogs into his pockets, secretly, when he leaves the store and he loves his tiny dancer.

	Kristine Snodgrass is an MFA student at University of Miami where she teaches creative writing and is the poetry editor for Mangrove magazine. She is currently working on her first book, a collection of collage and persona poems. Kristine lives in Miami, FL with her husband Jay. Kristine and Jay coordinate the monthly Luna Star Reading Series featuring up and coming writers from the Miami area. They had their first child in January 2003!

	Terese Svoboda is the author of four poetry collections. All Aberration, (University of Georgia, 1985) was nominated as an ALA Notable Book. Laughing Africa (University of Iowa, 1990) won the Iowa Prize. Excerpted in the NY Times Book Review, Mere Mortals was published by the University of Georgia in 1995. Treason was published in 2002 by Zoo Press. She has also authored three books of prose and one of translation. In 1995 her novel Cannibal (NYU Press) won the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award and the Great Lakes New Writers Award. SPIN magazine chose it as one of the best books of the year. Her second novel, A Drink Called Paradise, (Counterpoint Press,1999) was chosen one of the ten best books of the season by the Voice Literary Supplement. The New York Times called Trailer Girl and Other Stories (Counterpoint, 2001) "a book of genuine grace and beauty." Clean the Crocodile's Teeth, translations from the Nuer, was published by Greenfield Review Press in 1990, and was selected by Rosellen Brown for the "Writer's Choice" column in the New York Times Book Review. Svoboda is Visiting Poet for Spring 2003 at the University of Miami.

	Lakey Teasdale, born U S A in 1948 now lives on the island of South Ronaldsay, Orkney in the village of St Margaret's Hope, at 58 ° 53 min north. 3 ° 4 min west.

	Please choose one: 1. Mike Topp fell in love with a tuna but he could never fulfill his love because the tuna was so big and Mike Topp was so small. He also experienced long-standing occupational difficulties. His new book, HAPPY ENDING, from futuretensebooks.com, is available at amazon.com and powells.com. 2. Mike Topp was born in Washington, D.C. He is currently living in New York City unless he has died or moved. His new book, HAPPY ENDING, from futuretensebooks.com, is available at amazon.com and powells.com.

	Laura Valeri received her MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and her MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. Her book of short stories titled The Kind Of Things Saints Do (University of Iowa Press) won the 2002 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Gulfstream, USA Today, Infinite Race and The Ruben's Quarterly. She lives in Hallandale, Florida.

	Ginny Wray's poetry and creative autobiography have appeared in Absinthe, Brevity, Carve Magazine, Eclectica, Eyeshot, Hope Magazine, Linnaean Street, nycBigCityLit, Pindeldyboz, PoetryBay, PoetryMagazine, and Samsara Quarterly. She has a B.A. in Literature, and is on the editorial board of Fictionline.

photo by Lauren Young	Mark Young was born in Hokitika, New Zealand in 1941. First poems published at age 17, & subsequent work appeared in many N.Z. & Australian journals over the next decade & a half. Gave up writing - or was given up by it - around 1975. Was brought back into it by a request for permission to include a number of poems in the anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand poems 1960-1975 which appeared in 2000. Looked at his work again, liked what he saw. Was further enthused by the publication of a collection of his early poems - The right foot of the giant, published by Bumper Books in 1999 - & started writing again. Recent work has appeared both in print & online in, amongst other places, Jacket, brief, Poetry NZ, Shampoo & Sidereality. Links to his online work can be found on the New Zealand electronic poetry centre website at http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/misc/online.ptml#Y Has lived in Sydney, Australia since 1969.