Steve Almond was raised in Palo Alto, California, aka The Town Where God Will Retire. He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter, mostly in El Paso and Miami. He has been writing fiction for the last eight years. Author of Candy Freak (Algonquin Books, 2004) and My Life in Heavy Metal (Grove Press, 2002), his work can also be found in a whole bunch of literary magazines, along with the occasional porn outlet. He lives in Somerville, MA, and teaches creative writing at Boston College.

Robert Arnold is a writer, photographer, and editor living in Boston.

Joshua Beckman is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Your Time Has Come (Verse Press, 2004). He is also a translator and editor. He lives in Staten Island.

Andrea Cohen’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her fifth poetry collection, Unfathoming, is forthcoming from Four Way Books. Recent books include Furs Not Mine and Kentucky Derby. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA and the Writers House at Merrimack College.

Maggie Dietz is a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She has published poems in Poetry, Slate, Agni, Beloit Poetry Journal and elsewhere, and has received the Grolier Poetry Prize and the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy.

JT LeRoy is the author of the International Best Sellers Sarah (being made into a film by Steven Shainberg) and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (by Asia Argento). His third novel will be out on Viking in 2005. On Last Gasp Books, Harold’s End, an illustrated novella showcasing the works of Cherry Hood, will be released in Sept 2004. JT LeRoy is Associate Producer on Gus Van Sant’s new film, Elephant, which scooped the Palme d’Or and the best director award at Cannes. JT is part of the rock band Thistle, currently recording their debut with producer Jerry Harrison. JT is a contributing editor for Index, Flaunt, 7x7, and i-D, and also writes for Spin, GQ, Sunday London Times, etc.

Jill McDonough is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and REAPER, forthcoming from Alice James Books. She is the winner of a 2014 Lannan Literary Fellowship and three Pushcart prizes. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She directs the MFA program at UMass-Boston and 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center online.

Jean Monahan’s first collection, Hands, was chosen by Donald Hall to win the1991 Anhinga Prize, and her second collection, Believe It Or Not, was published by Orchises Press in 1999. She has won numerous prizes and has been published widely. Her third and fourth collections, Same Difference and 18th Century Zebra, have both been finalists for major prizes.

Rich Murphy’s poems have appeared in such journals as Rolling Stone, Poetry Magazine (where he was a featured poet), Grand Street, New Letters, Confrontation Magazine, Negative Capability, Slant Journal, Seattle Review, International Poetry Review, Montserrat Review, Connecticut Poetry Review, Icarus, Natural Bridge, Alligator Juniper, New Delta Review, Full Circle Journal, Fulcrum, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review.

Emily Newburger attended Boston University’s Master’s program in fiction writing, and has taught at Grub Street’s writing program.

Mary O’Donoghue is an Irish writer, living in Cambridge and teaching at Babson College. Her first poetry collection is Tulle (Salmon Poetry) and she is currently completing her second book. Awards include Salmon Poetry Award for a first collection and Hennessy/Sunday Tribune New Irish Writer. Her work appears in various European and US periodicals and anthologies.

Christina Pugh’s first book of poems, Rotary, received the Word Press First Book Prize and is forthcoming from Word Press in the summer of 2004. She is also the author of a chapbook of poems, Gardening at Dusk (Wells College Press, 2002). Her poems have recently appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Provincetown Arts, and in the anthology Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins. A recipient of the Grolier Poetry Prize, an AWP “Intro” Award, and Poetry magazine’s Ruth Lilly Fellowship, she is currently visiting assistant professor of English at Northwestern University.

Matthew Rohrer is the author of A Hummock in the Malookas, which won the 1994 National Poetry Series and was published by W.W. Norton; Satellite; Nice Hat. Thanks. (with Joshua Beckman); the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty; and A Green Light. He grew up in Oklahoma and attended universities in Ann Arbor, Dublin, Ireland, and Iowa City. He lives in Brooklyn and is a poetry editor for Fence Magazine and Fence Books.

Mark Rosenberg is from Charlottesville, VA and has taught at the University of Virginia Young Writers’ Workshop, the Cambridge Center For Adult Education, and at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst where he is currently working towards an MFA. He lives in Amherst, MA.

Emily Rosko is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and was a recipient of the 2002 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. Her work has appeared recently in the Notre Dame Review and Hubbub and is forthcoming in Pleiades and the Denver Quarterly.