Contributors' Notes

Stefani Barber is the author of Non Eligible Respondent and her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Tripwire, Kenning, and Step into a World: A Global Anthology of New Black Literature. She is an associate producer for a t.v. news program.

Justyna Bargielska was born in 1977 and is a social activist, a writer, and a poet. She is the author of two books of poetry, Dating Sessions (2003) and China Shipping (2005), and she is working on her third collection, Two Fiats (a working title). In 2010 her book of short stories, Obsoletki (Miscarriages), will be published by Wydawnicto Czarne. She lives in Warsaw.

Hannah Barrett holds a lifelong appointment as “Court Painter to the Wicked.” If you are wicked and lack a painted pedigree, Master Barrett can supply a single, pair, or group of portraits. Perhaps you already possess an ancestral gallery, but your pictures are lonely and require some fresh company? Master Barrett will gladly addend your family tree. Whether at your castle, palace, country manor, or town house, Master Barrett is happy to execute all of your portrait commissions from a comfortable suite with a nice view.

Kacper Bartczak received his Ph.D from the University of Łódź, where he is an Assistant Professor of American Literature. His book publications include In Search of Communication and Community: The Poetry of John Ashbery (Peter Lang, 2006), Świat nie scalony (Wrocław: Biuro Literackie, 2009), and Życie Świetnych Ludzi (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Kwadratura). He has published poems and critical articles in numerous Polish literary magazines, as well as the United States and Ireland, and has been the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation and Kosciuszko Foundation.

Ellen Baxt lives in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York. She has one full-length book, Analfabeto / An Alphabet (Shearsman Books) and four chapbooks, Since I Last Wrote (Sona Books), Tender Chemistry (Sona Books), The day is a ladle (Press Toe) and Enumeration of colonies is not EPA approved (Press Toe). Her writing has appeared in ActionYes, How2, Saint Elizabeth Street, spell, the tiny and XCP:Streetnotes.

Dodie Bellamy’s chapbook Barf Manifesto was named best book of 2009 under 30 pages by Time Out New York. Other books include Academonia, Pink Steam, and The Letters of Mina Harker. Her book Cunt-Ups won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for poetry. She lives in San Francisco with writer Kevin Killian and three cats.

Martine Bellen’s 2x(Squared) will be published in the spring (BlazeVox books). For more about her other work, visit www.martinebellen.com.

Guy Bennett is the author of several works of poetry, nonfiction, and numerous translations. His writing has been featured in magazines and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad, and presented in poetry and arts festivals internationally. Publisher of Mindmade Books (formerly Seeing Eye Books) and co-editor of Otis Books / Seismicity Editions, he lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Otis College of Art and Design.

Miron Białoszewski (June 30, 1922 – June 17, 1983), born in Warsaw, Poland, was a Polish poet, novelist, playwright and actor. He published nearly two dozen books in his lifetime, including Obroty rzeczy (The Revolution of Things), Myle Wzruszenia (Erroneous Emotions), and his highly acclaimed Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising.

Miłosz Biedrzycki (also writing as MLB) was born in 1967, and is the author of six volumes of poetry published in Poland. A bilingual book of selected poems, 69, is forthcoming from Zephyr Press.

Julia Bloch grew up in Northern California and Sydney, Australia, and currently lives in Philadelphia, where she is a doctoral candidate in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the co-founder of the Emergency reading series at the Kelly Writers House; her new chapbook The Selfist is forthcoming from Katalanché Press.

Taylor Brady lives in San Francisco. He is the author of several books of poetry and prose, most recently Occupational Treatment (2006), and Yesterday’s News (2005), and is the co-author with Rob Halpern of Snow Sensitive Skin (2007). Recent poems, beginning to accumulate under the title Pamphlets, Rants, Tracts & Ballads, attempt a series of extrapolations, re-readings, and polemics with and against the grain of the writers and musicians who instruct him. He is active in the Nonsite Collective, and has recently edited the collected essays of Will Alexander for 2010 publication.

Andrzej Busza (b. 1938, Poland) is a Polish poet, essayist, and translator. His books include Astrologer in the Underground and Scenes from the Life of Laquedem. He has written extensively on the work of Joseph Conrad, and along with Bogdan Czaykowski was the first to translate a collection of Miron Białoszewski’s poetry into English, The Revolution of Things.

Ewa Chruściel writes both in Polish and English. In 2003 Studium published her first book in Polish, Furkot. Her second book in Polish is forthcoming in 2009. Her manuscript in English, Strata, won the 2009 International Book Contest, and will be published in December 2010 in the United States. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals in the U.S., Poland, and Great Britain. Her translations of poetry from Polish to English have appeared in numerous journals and two anthologies: Carnivorous Boy, Carnivorous Bird and Six Polish Poets. She is a Professor of Humanities at Colby-Sawyer College in United States.

Norma Cole is a poet, painter, and translator. Her recent work includes 14000 Facts, Do the Monkey, Spinoza in Her Youth, Natural Light and Scout (a CD-ROM). Her translations include Danielle Collobert’s Notebooks 1956-1978, Fouad Gabriel Naffah’s The Spirit God and the Properties of Nitrogen, and Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France. Born in Canada, Cole has lived in San Francisco since 1977.

CAConrad is the recipient of The Gil Ott Book Award for The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009).  He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED:  (Factory School, 2010). He invites you to visit him online at CAConrad.blogspot.com 
and also with his friends at PhillySound.blogspot.com.

Rob Cook is the author of Songs For The Extinction of Winter, Diary of Tadpole, the Dirtbag (both from Rain Mountain Press), and Blackout Country (BlazeVOX [books]). Work has appeared or will appear in A cappella Zoo, Caketrain, Osiris, Weave, Fence, and Zoland.

Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986.  His third collection of poetry, Chopstix Numbers, is available from Boise State University’s Ahsahta Press.  Poems from his new manuscript Awake are upcoming in Global Tapestry Review, Lungfull!, Poetry New Zealand, Alimentum, Dalhousie Review, Court Green, Mudfish, Van Gogh’s Ear, Inkwell, Eleven Eleven, Euphony, Margie, Hawaii Review, and The Antigonish Review.

Michael Cross edits Atticus/Finch Chapbooks and co-edits ON: Contemporary Practice (with Thom Donovan and Kyle Schlesinger). Additionally, his work as an editor includes the anthologies Involuntary Vision: After Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (Avenue B, 2003), Building is a Process / Light is an Element: Essays and Excursions for Myung Mi Kim (co-edited with Andrew Rippeon, Queue Books, 2008), and a forthcoming edition of the George Oppen Memorial Lectures at San Francisco State. He is finishing a monograph on the work of Louis Zukofsky, and starting work on a short critical work on Leslie Scalapino. His chapbooks include Cede (Vigilance Society, 2006) and Throne (Dos Press, 2007), and his full-length poetry collections include In Felt Treeling (Chax, 2009) and Haecceities (forthcoming from Cuneiform in 2010).

Brent Cunningham is a writer, publisher, and visual artist currently living in Oakland, California with his wife and daughter. His first book of poetry, Bird & Forest, was pub-lished by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2005, and his second, Journey to the Sun, is forthcoming.  He and Neil Alger founded and run Hooke Press, a chapbook press dedicated to publishing short runs of poetry, criticism, theory, writing, and ephemera.

Bogdan Czaykowski (b. 1932, Poland; d. 2007, Canada), was a Polish Canadian poet, essayist, literary translator and literary critic, professor emeritus, and former Dean at the University of British Columbia. He wrote numerous articles in academic journals and literary magazines, and was the subject of literary research papers. Czaykowski received the Killam Prize in 1996, the Polish literary awards Fundacja Turzańskich (1992) and Fundacja Kościelskich (1964), and other awards. With Andrzej Busza, he was the first to translate a collection of Miron Białoszewski’s poetry into English (The Revolution of Things).

Mina Pam Dick (aka Hildebrand Pam Dick, Nico Pam Dick et al.) is a writer, artist, and philosopher living in New York City. She’s a native New Yorker. She received a BA from Yale, and an MA in Philosophy as well as an MFA in Painting from the University of Minnesota. Her prose and poetry have appeared in BOMB, Tantalum, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Boog Portable Reader #4. Her philosophical work has appeared in a collection put out by the International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria). Her first book Delinquent was published by Futurepoem in 2009.  

Dolores Dorantes (b. 1973) lives in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. She is site director of the border office of Documentación y Estudios de Mujeres, A.C. (Women’s Documentation and Studies; www.demacvirtual.org.mx), a nonprofit dedicated to promoting autobiographical writing among women in marginalized communities. She has published three books of poetry: Poemas para niños, SexoPUROsexoVELOZ, and Septiembre; as well as the epistolary book Lola: Cartas Cortas. She updates her blog regularly: www.dorantes.blogspot.com.

Patrick Durgin is a poet-critic whose recent publications include The Route, a collaboration with Jen Hofer (Atelos, 2008), and contributions to Contemporary Women’s Writing, Denver Quarterly, The Journal of Modern Literature, Mark(s)zine, textsound.org, and XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics. New work is forthcoming in P-Queue, Prairie Schooner, and WIG. Durgin teaches literature and writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Cathy Eisenhower lives and works in Washington, DC. Edge published her first book, clearing without reversal, and Roof her second, would with and. She’s translating the selected poems of Argentine poet Diana Bellessi and is an editor of the forthcoming journal Women in and Beyond the Global.

Laura Elrick is the author of the books sKincerity and Fantasies in Permeable Structures. Audio pieces and the video-poem “Stalk” can be accessed online at Pennsound. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Cal Freeman was born and raised in Detroit. He received his undergraduate degree from University of Detroit–Mercy and received his MFA from Bowling Green State University in 2004. That year Terrance Hayes awarded him the Devine Poetry Fellowship. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal, Nimrod, Commonweal, Drunken Boat, Ninth Letter, as well as several other journals. He currently teaches at University of Detroit–Mercy.

Rodrigo Flores and his homies (Mexico City, 1977) are the authors of estimado cliente (Lapsus, 2005 and Bonobos/Setenta, 2007) and baterías (Invisible, 2006). They were the founders and editors of the literary journal Oráculo. Revista de poesía (2000-2009).

Karen Garthe’s poetry appears in the premier and current issue of Lana Turner, and is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Mad Hatters Review, and the Colorado Review. Her poetry has been published in New American Writing, Chicago Review, Fence, VOLT, and American Letters & Commentary.  Her first book Frayed escort won the 2005 Colorado Prize and her second book The Banjo Clock will be published in 2012.

Nada Gordon is currently considered a single author. If one or more works are by a distinct, homonymous authors, go ahead and split the author. She wrote Folly, V. Imp., Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?, foriegnn bodie, and, with Gary Sullivan, Swoon. She is a founding member of the Flarf Collective. At the time of this bio-writing, she is working on a movie about women, hair, and excess.

Noah Eli Gordon is the author of several collections of poetry, including Novel Pictorial Noise (Harper Perennial, 2007), which was selected by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series, and subsequently given the SFSU Poetry Center Book Award. His work in this issue is excerpted from The Source—a manuscript marking the results of a multi-year investigation in constrained bibliomancy and ambient research; other excerpts can be found in recent issues of New American Writing and Denver Quarterly. He’s the co-publisher of Letter Machine Editions and an Assistant Professor in the MFA program in Creative Writing at The University of Colorado–Boulder.

Andy Gricevich lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he edits the journal Cannot Exist.  He has spent much of the past decade performing strange political theater, experimental chamber music, and satirical songs with the Nonsense Company and the Prince Myshkins.  His poems appear here and there.  He is uncomfortably writing this in the third person.

James Grinwis lives in Florence, Massachusetts, and is founding editor of Bateau Press. His work has appeared in a diverse variety of journals, including Columbia, Conjunctions, Court Green, Cranky, and Cream City Review.
 
Gabriel Gudding’s most recent book is Rhode Island Notebook (Dalkey Archive Press, 2007), a 436-page poem he wrote in his car. His poetry, essays, and translations appear in periodicals such as Harper’s Magazine, The Journal of the History of Ideas, New American Writing, Eoagh, in such anthologies as Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner), The Oxford Anthology of Latin American Poetry, Poems for the Millennium, and The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (University of California Press). He is a contributing editor for Mandorla: Nueva Escritura de las Américas, has started creative writing programs in three prisons, and is a Professor of Creative Writing and Experimental Poetics, whatever that is, at Illinois State University.

Rob Halpern is the author of several books of poetry, including Rumored Place (Krupskaya, 2004) and Disaster Suites (Palm Press, 2009). With Taylor Brady he also co-authored the book length poem Snow Sensitive Skin (Atticus / Finch, 2007). Music for Porn is forthcoming. Currently, he’s co-editing the poems of the late Frances Jaffer together with Kathleen Fraser, and translating the early essays of Georges Perec, the second of which, “Commitment or the Crisis of Language,” recently appeared in the Review of Contemporary Fiction together with an essay of his own on Perec. An active participant in the Nonsite Collective, Rob lives and works in San Francisco.

Alan Halsey’s recent books are Lives of the Poets (Five Seasons) and Term as in Aftermath (Ahadada). His earlier work is collected in Marginalien (Five Seasons, 2005) and Not Everything Remotely (Salt, 2006).

Jen Hofer is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, and urban cyclist. Her most recent books are a series of anti-war-manifesto poems titled one (Palm Press, 2009), sexoPUROsexoVELOZ, and Septiembre, a translation from Dolores Dorantes by Dolores Dorantes (Counterpath Press and Kenning Editions, 2008); The Route, a collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos, 2008); and lip wolf, a translation of lobo de labio by Laura Solórzano (Action Books, 2007). She teaches at CalArts, Goddard College, and Otis College, and works nationally and locally as a social justice interpreter. Her translations from Intervenir can be found in Mandorla #13 and OR #3.

Rick Hilles was a recipient of a 2008 Whiting Writers Award and is currently a fellow at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. He has been the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and the Ruth and Jay C. Halls Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has received the Larry Levis Editor’s Prize in Poetry from The Missouri Review. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Salmagundi, and Witness. He teaches poetry at Vanderbilt University.

Scott Inguito, a poet, painter and educator, teaches writing and critical thinking at San Jose Community College. Recent poems have appeared in Shampoo, and his paintings can be seen at scottinguito.com. He is the author of Dear Jack (Momotombo Press, 2008).

Michael Ives is the author of The External Combustion Engine (Futurepoem Books). His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous magazines and journals both in the United States and abroad.  He has taught at Bard College since 2003.

Katarzyna Jakubiak is an Assistant Professor of English at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Her work includes scholarship in African diaspora studies and translation theory, as well as translations of work by contemporary Polish poets Ewa Sonnenberg, Dariusz Sosnicki, and Roman Honet. In Poland, she published a collection of translations of Yusef Komunyakaa’s poetry, Pochwala miejsc ciemnych (Znak, 2005).
paolo javier is the recent author of The Feeling Is Actual (creature press) and Megton Gasgan Krakooom (Cy Gist Press). He runs 2nd Avenue Poetry and lives in Queens.

Andrew Joron’s latest poetry collection is The Sound Mirror (Flood Editions, 2008). The Cry at Zero, a selection of his prose poems and critical essays, was published by Counterpath Press in 2007. City Lights will publish his Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems in 2010. Joron’s critical study of American surrealist poetry, Neo-surrealism; or, the Sun at Night will be reissued by Kolourmeim Press in 2010. Joron is also the translator, from the German, of the Marxist-Utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch’s Literary Essays (Stanford University Press, 1998).

Aneta Kamińska (b. 1976) is a poet and translator of contemporary Ukrainian poetry. She was born in Szczebrzeszyn, comes from Zamość, and lives in Warsaw. She holds an M.A. in Polish Philology from the University of Warsaw and teaches Polish as a foreign language. She is the author of the collections Wiersze zdyszane (Breathless Poems, 2000), zapisz zmiany, (save the changes, 2004), and czary i mary (hipertekst) (hocus and pocus [hypertext]) In 2007 her translation of Nazar Honczar’s collection Gdybym (If I) was published. Recently she has been working on the innovative anthology Cząstki pomarańczy. Nowa poezja ukraińska (Slices of Orange: Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry), and a new collection, autoportret szczątkowy. ostatnie wiersze nazara honczara napisane przez anetę kamińską (a residual self-portrait. the last poems of nazar honczar written by aneta kamińska). She blogs at www.wszczebrzeszynie.blog.pl (where she recounts the adventures of foreigners with the Polish language) and www.marszrutka.blog.pl (where she talks about her experience translating Ukrainian poetry).

Vincent Katz is the author of Alcuni Telefonini (Granary Books, 2008) and Judge (Charta/Libellum, 2007).  Recent work can be found in EOAGH 5, Letterbox, Bomb, and Live Mag.  He lives in New York.

Monika Kocot holds an M.A. in Polish Philology, and is completing another graduate degree in English Philology at the University of Łódź. Her field of research is Scottish and Polish contemporary poetry seen through the prism of contemporary literary theories. She has published on Polish language poetry, cognitive aspects of Stanisław Swen Czachorowski’s immanent poetics, poetic imagery in William Blake’s and Moniza Alvi’s works, but also on postmodern American Indian novels by Thomas King and Sherman Alexie. She combines theory of literature and cognitive linguistics to engage in comparative analyses of literary works. She is also a member of the Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association and the chair of the K.K. Baczyński Literary Society.

Ela Kotkowska works as an editor for Oxford University Press. Her translations from French and Polish have appeared in Chicago Review and Poetry. Her own work was featured most recently in the anthology The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Millenium (William Allegrezza and Raymond Bianchi, editors).

Virginia Lucas (Uruguay, b. 1977) is a poet, editor, and literature professor. Her books include the poetry collections Épicas marinas (Artefato, 2004) and No es de acanto la flor en piedra (Lapsus, 2005) and the anthology Orsai: género, erotismo y subjetividad (Pirates, MVD, 2008). She is Literature Director of the National Office of Culture (part of the Uruguyuan Ministry of Education and Culture) and is Reserach Coordinator of Queer Studies Montevideo, where she is also a member of the Humanities Department, with a focus on Latin American Literature. Recently she has been concerned with problematics of representation in poetic writing and reading modes absent a foundation in the body. Part of her project addresses the problematic of various Americas and posits an approach toward cultural criticism as cultural poetics.

Krzysztof Majer, Ph.D. (University of Łódź / Adam Mickiewicz University) is involved in Canadian and American Studies. His chief interests are postwar North American fiction as well as Jewish literature and culture. He also works as a freelance translator of fiction, art criticism, and literary theory.

Filip Marinovich is author of Zero Readership (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008), and of the forthcoming Sanguis. Work appears online in EOAGH #3 and #5 and in Critiphoria. He has performed his poems and plays in Paris, San Francisco, and New York.

C.J. Martin lives in Lockhart, Texas, where he co-edits Dos Press with Julia Drescher. He’s also a contributing editor for Little Red Leaves (www.littleredleaves.com) & LRL e-editions. He’s the author of WIW?3: Hold me tight. Make me happy (Delete Press, 2009), Lo, Bittern (Atticus/Finch, 2008), and City (Vigilance, 2007). He teaches at Texas State University–San Marcos.

Rod Mengham teaches at the University of Cambridge, where he is also Curator of Works of Art at Jesus College.  He has written books on Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, and Henry Green, is the author of The Descent of Language (1993), and has edited collections of essays on contemporary fiction, violence, and avant-garde art, and the fiction of the 1940s. He is also the editor of the Equipage series of poetry pamphlets, co-editor and co-translator of Altered State: the New Polish Poetry (Arc Publications, 2003), and co-editor of Vanishing Points: New Modernist Poems (Salt, 2005).  His own poems have been published under the title Unsung: New and Selected Poems (Folio/Salt, 1996; 2nd edition, 2001). His Most recent book was Parleys and Skirmishes [poems] with photographs by Marc Atkins (Ars Cameralis, 2007).

Edric Mesmer, collator of the “Buffalo local” Yellow Edenwald Field, works as an adjunct lecturer, academic researcher, and bookshop aficionado. Poems appear elsewhere in BlazeVOX and in the forthcoming Vanitas.

Monika Mosiewicz is the author of cosinus salsa, which was nominated for several literary awards in Poland. She is a practicing attorney and lives in Pabianice.

Myung Mi Kim is the author of Penury, Commons, DURA, The Bounty, and Under Flag. Kim was awarded The Multicultural Publisher’s Exchange Award of Merit for Under Flag and a number of other awards. The anthologies in which her work has appeared include American Poets in the 21st Century: The New American Poetics, Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women, Premonitions: Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, and Making More Waves: New Writing by Asian American Women.

Laura Moriarty’s long essay poem, A Tonalist, is due out from Nightboat Books in early 2010. Ladybug Laws, a chapbook from Slack Buddha, appeared in December 2009. Other books are A Semblance: Selected & New Poetry 1975-2007 (Omnidawn Publishing) and a chapbook, An Air Force (Hooke Press). Ultravioleta, a novel, and Self-Destruction, a book of poetry, are also pretty recent. She has taught at Mills College and Naropa University among other places and is currently Deputy Director of Small Press Distribution. She is findable online at A Tonalist Notes and related blogs.
 
Eileen Myles is a poet who lives in New York. Her novel The Inferno/a poet’s novel will be out before the end of the year. She is teaching this spring in Missoula, Montana.

Lee Norton lives in Brooklyn and works in New York.  His work has been published in Sawbuck, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and 6x6, and is forthcoming from Drunken Boat and Supermachine.

Linnea Ogden is the author of two chapbooks, Another Limit (Projective Industries, 2009) and Long Weekend, Short Leash (TapRoot Editions), which is forthcoming in 2010. Her work has appeared in Conduit, The Boston Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She lives and works in San Francisco.

Geoffrey Olsen is the author of the chapbook End Notebook (Petrichord Books). He lives in Brooklyn and works at The Cooper Union. 

Przemysław Owczarek was born in 1975 and is a cultural anthropologist by profession. He is a graduate from Jagiellonian University in Kraków with an M.A. in Art and Literature Studies. He is responsible for the Department of Urban Cultures in the Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum in Łódź. He has contributed to scientific, artistic, and literary publications, including Tygiel Kultury (Culture Pot), Literatura Ludowa (People’s Literature), Magazyn Sztuki (Magazine of Art), Studium, Format, Gazeta Wyborcza, Journal of Urban Ethnology, and numerous other periodicals. He has received numerous poetry awards throughout Poland and has published two full-length books: Rdza [Rust] (2007) and Cyklist (2009). He is the general editor of a new quarterly journal, Arterie, dedicated to literature and art, and the coordinator of a poetry series in tandem with the magazine. He is interested in contemporary art.

Jocelyn Saidenberg is the author of Mortal City (Parentheses Writing Series), CUSP (Kelsey St. Press), Negativity (Atelos), and Dispossessed (Belladonna). Born and raised in New York City, she lives in San Francisco where she works as a catalog librarian for the public library.

Tomaz Šalamun lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and occasionally teaches in the US. His recent books translated into English are Woods and Chalices (Harcourt, 2008), Poker (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008) and There’s the Hand and There’s the Arid Chair (Counterpath Press, 2009). His Blue Tower is due from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2010. He received Europäische Preis in Münster, Germany, in 2007 and a Golden Wreath from Struga Poetry Evenings in Macedonia in 2009.

Leslie Scalapino is the author of thirty-one books of poetry, fiction, plays, and essays including Day Ocean State of Stars’ Night (Green Integer, 2007) and It’s go in horizontal, Selected Poems (University of California Pres, 2008). Next spring UC Press will publish a lengthy collection of poetry by Michael McClure, Of Indigo and Saffron, which Scalapino selected and for which she wrote an introduction. Granary Books in New York has published two books of her poetry as collaborations with artists, including The Animal Is in the World like Water in Water with artist Kiki Smith (2010). FC2 published her novel, Dahlia’s Iris, and Floats Horse-floats or Horse-flows is due in February 2010 from Starcherone in New York.

Standard Schaefer is a poet and fiction writer living in Portland, Oregon.  His books are Nova (Sun & Moon Books, 2000), Water & Power (Agincourt, 2005), Desert Notebook (ML & NLF, 2009), False Purgatories (forthcoming from Chax, 2010).

Kate Schapira is the author of TOWN (Factory School, Heretical Texts series, 2010) and several chapbooks, including Heroes and Monsters (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), The Saint’s Notebook (Flying Guillotine Press), and The Love of Freak Millways and Tango Wax (Cy Gist Press). Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, and she coordinates the Publicly Complex Reading Series in Providence, Rhode Island.

Anne Shaw is the author of Undertow (Persea Books), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New American Writing, Gulf Coast, Green Mountains Review, Black Warrior Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She has also been featured in Poetry Daily and From the Fishouse. Her extended experimental poetry project can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/anneshaw. 

Rick Snyder is the author of Escape from Combray (Ugly Duckling, 2009), Flown Season (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2004), and Forecast Memorial (Duration, 2002). He divides his time between Rochester, New York, and Manhattan.

Andrzej Sosnowski, poet and translator, was born in 1959. He is the author of nine collections of poetry. His translations include both poems and prose by authors such as John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Jane Bowles, John Cage, Ronald Firbank, Harry Mathews, and Ezra Pound. He lives in Warsaw.

Celina Su was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and lives in New York City. She teaches political science at Brooklyn College and is the author of Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University Press) and Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education (NYU Press, co-authored). She has also worked with the Burmese Refugee Project, in northwestern Thailand, since 2001. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Action, Yes, Sous Rature, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, and elsewhere.

Nathalie Stephens (Nathanaël) writes l’entre-genre in English and French. Her books include The Sorrow And The Fast Of It (2007), Paper City (2003), Je Nathanaël (2003/2006), L’Injure (2004), . . . s’arrête? Je (2007), and the essay of correspondence, Absence Where As (Claude Cahun and the Unopened Book) (2009).

Katarzyna Szuster (a.k.a. Żółwik) holds an M.A. in English Philology from the University of Łódź. She translates contemporary Polish poetry and is working on a book-length manuscript entitled All the Weird-Looking Animals. She also knits, découpages, and has recently begun training to be a plant-whisperer.

Mark Tardi is the author of the book Euclid Shudders (Litmus Press) and two chapbooks: Part First––––Chopin’s Feet (g-o-n-g) and Airport music (Bronze Skull). Recent poems have appeared in Chicago Review, Van Gogh’s Ear, and the anthology The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Millenium. He was the 2009–2010 Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of Łódź and continues to teach there, translate Polish poetry, and torture himself with clay-court tennis, devastating bike rides, and undying support for the Chicago Cubs and Liverpool FC.

Michael Thomas Taren is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. His poems appeared in Colorado Review. His translations of Tomaž Šalamun were published in 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book (Trinity University Press, 2009), Slovene Sampler (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008) and have appeared or are forthcoming in Chicago Review, Public Space, Poetry Review (UK), Fulcrum, Colorado Review, Ninth Letter, Jubilat, Poetry London, Circumference, and elsewhere. His book, Puberty, was a finalist for The Fence Poetry Series.

Alissa Valles has worked for the BBC, the Dutch Institute of War Documentation, the Jewish Historical Institute, and La Strada International in Warsaw, and is now an independent writer, editor, and translator based in the Bay Area. Her poetry book Orphan Fire (Four Way Books) appeared in 2008. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, TriQuarterly Review, Poetry, Verse, Boston Review, The Washington Post Book World, and elsewhere; she has been a recipient of a Ruth Lilly Poetry fellowship and the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine, as well as a number of other awards. She is editor and co-translator of Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems 1956-1998 (Ecco), a New York Times Notable Book in 2007, and Collected Prose (forthcoming, 2010) and has contributed translations to the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Harper’s, Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders, where she acted as poetry editor, and The New European Poets anthology (Graywolf, 2008), for which she was also an editor.

Born in 1929 of Belgian parents, in Asnières, on the outskirts of Paris, Michel van Schendel studied law before settling in Québec in 1952. He quickly became active in sociopolitical and literary debates, publishing Poèmes de l’Amérique étrangère in 1958, then Variations sur la pierre in 1964 with Éditions de l’Hexagone. During the 60s, van Schendel had various occupations: journalist, critic, translator, screenwriter, director of the journal, Socialisme. When he became a professor, he observed a long poetic silence, which he broke in 1978 with Veiller ne plus veiller, written in the margins of a strike at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He was awarded the Prix du Gouverneur Général du Canada in 1980 for De l’oeil et de l’écoute, the Prix Victor-Barbeau and Prix de la Revue Spirale in 2003 for Un temps éventuel as well as the Prix Athanase-David for his life work. Mille pas dans le jardin font aussi le tour du monde appeared several weeks before Michel van Schendel’s death in fall 2005.

Frank L. Vigoda is a literary translator based in Riverside, California, who translates from Polish (primarily poetry). Translations have appeared in a variety of publications including Modern Poetry in Translation, Lyric Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Absinthe: New European Writing, Circumference, and Fence. 69 (New Polish Writing), a collection of poems by Miłosz Biedrzycki, is forthcoming from Zephyr Press.

Jasmine Dreame Wagner is the author of Charcoal (For Arbors, 2008), a chapbook of poems.  Her poems have also appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Blackbird, Verse, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, North American Review, Action, Yes, and other magazines.  Her fiction has been featured in the Seattle Review and Lost and Found: Stories From New York Vol. 2 (Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Books, distributed by W. W. Norton, 2009).  A graduate of Columbia University, Wagner was a writer-in-residence at The Hall Farm Center for Arts & Education in Townshend, Vermont.  She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she performs folk and experimental music as Cabinet of Natural Curiosities.

Craig Watson’s recent books include Free Will (Roof, 2000) True News (Instance Press, 2002) and Secret Histories (Burning Deck, 2007). Meanwhile, he continues to search for the perfect cinnamon roll recipe.
tyrone williams is the author of three books of poetry, c.c. (Krupskaya Books, 2002), On Spec (Omnidawn Publishing, 2008) and The Hero Project of the Century (The Backwaters Press, 2009).

Dustin Williamson is the author of the chapbooks Gorilla Dust (Open24Hours) and Exhausted Grunts (Cannibal Books). He is the Monday night reading coordinator at the Poetry Project and the publisher of Rust Buckle Books.

Stephanie Young lives and works in Oakland, California. Her books of poetry are Picture Palace (in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni, 2008) and Telling the Future Off (Tougher Disguises, 2005). She edited Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006) and her most recent editorial project is Deep Oakland (www.deepoakland.org).

Ouyang Yu came to Australia in early 1991 and has since published 52 books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, literary translation, and criticism in English and Chinese languages. He also edits Australia’s only Chinese literary journal, Otherland (since 1995). His noted books include his award-winning novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle (2002), his collections of poetry, Songs of the Last Chinese Poet (1997) and The Kingsbury Tales (2008), his translations in Chinese, The Female Eunuch (1991) and The Man Who Loved Children (1998), and his book of criticism, Chinese in Australian Fiction: 1888-1988 (US, 2008). He is now based in Melbourne. His website can be found at www.ouyangyu.com.au.

Ilona Zineczko is a photographer, writer, and part-time ninja. Recent work can be found in Matchless Magazine (www.matchlessmagazine.de), as well as Dekadentzya, where she is a contributing editor. She is completing an M.A. in English Philology at the University of Łódź.

Elizabeth Zuba co-edits swerve magazine and makes art in Brooklyn.