Ross Gay's poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, North American Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, and Margie: The American Journal of Poetry. He is a Cave Canem fellow and a basketball coach.

David Groff is a poet, writer, and editor living in New York City.  His book Theory of Devolution was selected by Mark Doty for the 2001 National Poetry Series and was published in 2002 by the University of Illinois Press.  It was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and Publishing Triangle Award.
He is the co-author with the late Robin Hardy of The Crisis of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood (Houghton Mifflin/University of Minnesota Press), and co-editor of Whitman's Men: Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems Celebrated by Contemporary Photographers  (Universe/Rizzoli).  He has taught at the University of Iowa, where he received his MFA and MA degrees, Rutgers and New York Universities, and William Paterson University.

Paul Guest's first collection of poems, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, won the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize.  His poems appear in Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Lyric and elsewhere.  He also is co-editor of Mot Juste .

Kenneth Hart lives in Long Valley, NJ. He holds a BA from Rutgers University in English and Education, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. He teaches writing and literature at New York University, the Clemente Institute for the Humanities, and elsewhere, and gives readings and workshops for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. He has published his poems and reviews in The Bellingham Review, Etcetera, and The Journal of New Jersey Poets. In September, 2002, he read his poems at the Dodge Poetry Festival, and is currently completing a manuscript entitled, The Blood that Loves You.

Melissa Hotchkiss is one of the editors of the poetry journal Barrow Street and she co-directs the Barrow Street Reading Series in New York City.  Her work has appeared in The Marlboro Review, Four Way Reader #2, The New York Times, LIT, 7 Carmine, Cortland Review, 3^rd bed, Gathering of the Tribes, and Heliotrope.  Her prose has appeared in The New York Times and the New Virginia Review.  Melissa's book Storm Damage, was published by Tupelo Press in 2002.

Bethany Johns combines a BA in English from The University of Iowa with an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design to teach visual language and typography in the Yale School of Art graduate graphic design program. She lives and designs books in New York City.

Kasey Jueds received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence and has poems published or forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Barrow Street, 5 A.M.,

The Beloit Poetry Journal, Puerto del Sol, The Women's Review of Books, and The Marlboro Review.  She's also been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming.

Joy Katz was trained in industrial design. The recipient of a Wallace Stegner fellowship at Stanford University and the Nadya Aisenberg fellowship at The MacDowell Colony, she is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Dark Horses: Poets on Lost Poems and a senior editor at Pleiades. Her first book, Fabulae, won the 2002 Crab Orchard Award. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Fence, Ploughshares, Electronic Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere, and was selected for The Best American Poetry 2003. She lives in Brooklyn.

Judy Katz  is a documentary filmmaker and producer of public television.  She received her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Times Book Review, Lumina, BigCityLit and The Women's Review of Books.  Judy lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

Maud Lindsay

Kaye McDonough "came of age as a poet in San Francisco’s North Beach district during the explosion of readings that occurred there in the late sixties and early seventies. She was regarded as the most gifted woman poet of a circle of North Beach Poets that included Bob Kaufman and Jack Micheline." -- The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, edited by Alan Kaufman, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 1999. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines, including City Lights Anthology, The Stiffest of the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader, City Lights Review, City Lights Journal, Umbra, Beatitude (14 issues) and most recently in Litterature en Marche, France.

Suzanne Parker is an adjunct associate professor of writing at New York University and holds an MA in creative writing from City College.  Suzanne's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattapallax, A Gathering of Tribes, Diner, Poetry Motel, Oysterboy Review, and other literary journals.  She was the Poetry Fellow at the 2001 Prague Summer Seminars and is the winner of the Alice M. Sellers Academy of American Poets Prize. 

Peg Peoples'poetry and reviews are forthcoming or have appeared in Verse, River Styx, Rattapallax, New Letters, The Adirondak Review, Nidus, 7 Carmine, and the anthology Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily, and she has received awards and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, Writers at Work, The Vermont Studio Center, Hall Farm, The Jacob K. Javits Foundation, and the Bucknell Center for Younger Poets. She lives in New York City and teaches at Pratt Institute and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Sciences and Art.

Lee Peterson's  first collection of poems is a series of dramatic monologues set in wartime Bosnia. Poems from this series have appeared or are forthcoming in Nimrod, Lyric Review of Poetry and The Seattle Review. She teaches English as a Second Language at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY.

Sina Queyras teaches writing at Rutgers. Her work has been published most recently in The Malahat Review and online at Greenboathouse, SLIP, her first collection of poetry, was published in 2001. Sina lives in Brooklyn. 

Patrick Rosal is the author of Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (Persea Books) and the chapbook Uncommon Denominators which won the Palanquin Poetry Series Award. His work has appeared in many journals including North American Review, Footwork, The Literary Review as well as the anthologies The Beacon Best 2001 and The NuyorAsian Anthology.

Susan Scheid's  fiction has appeared most recently in Hayden's Ferry Review (“Thief,” Issue 29), The Portland Review (“The Problem of Speed,” Fall, 2003), and Prairie Schooner (“Daguerreotypy,” Fall 2002).  Her short novel, “The Ocularist’s Daughter,” was selected as a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction and as one of the top ten submissions for the Dana Award in the Novel.  Her story “The Order of Things” (Oasis, October-December, 2000) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her story “The Woman Who Felt Things” (Willow Review, 2001) received a Willow Review award for fiction.

Dan Shea works in publishing and as a reading tutor at Interfaith Neighbors. He lives in New York City.

Elaine Sexton’s poems and reviewshave appeared in American Poetry Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Rattapallax, the Women's Review of Books, Art News and numerous other publications.  Her poems have been posted on Poetry Daily and broadcast on "What's the Word?" a public radio program devoted to poetry.   Sleuth, her first collection of poems, was published by New Issues Press (Western Michigan University) in 2003.

In 1999 Sexton first gathered friends at 7 Carmine, her Greenwich Village apartment, a group that forms the basis of this documentary chapbook series.

Aaron Smith is the author of What's Required (Thorngate Road), winner of the 2003 Frank O'Hara Award Chapbook Contest.  His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications including Bloom, 5 AM, Pleiades, and Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets (Melville House).  He is the recipient of a Kestrel Poetry Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize.

Yerra Sugarman's first collection of poems FORMS OF GONE was published by the Sheep Meadow Press in 2002.  Her awards included a "Discovery" / THE NATION prize, a George Bogin Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and an Academy of American Poets Prize.  She is a contributing editor of RATTAPALLAX and teaches at New York University and CIty College.

Jeet Thayil was born in Kerala – India’s southernmost state, with the highest literacy and suicide rates in the country. He was educated in Bombay, Hongkong and New York.  He is the author of three books of poetry: Gemini (Penguin Viking, 1992), Apocalypso (Ark Arts, 1997), and English, his third collection of poems, which will be co-published by Penguin Viking and Rattapallax early next year.

Michelle Valladares is a poet and filmmaker. She has finished her first book of poems, Jackfruit, Split Lips. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Women’s Review of Books, Global City Review and 7 Carmine. Currently she teaches writing at Marymount Manhattan College and School of Visual Arts in New York.

Conrad Wells is a Chicago born writer and painter. His poems have appeared in LVNG, Columbia Poetry Review, No Roses and New American Writing.Currently he is a proud resident of Brooklyn, NY.