Contributor's notes

Cara Benson has two poetry books forthcoming: (made) with BookThug and Protean Parade with Black Radish. She edits the online journal Sous Rature (www.necessetics.com/sousrature.html). Her chapbook Quantum Chaos and Poems: A Manifest(o)ation co-won the bpNichol Prize. Editor of the interdisciplinary book Predictions for Chain, Benson took part in the Belladonna Elders Series and is a member of the Dusie Kollektiv. She teaches poetry in a NY State Prison.

Frances Blau began in 1978 a career in theater, designing, creating and building costumes for a number of regional theater companies. In 1995 she returned to school and completed a master’s degree in contemplative psychotherapy from Naropa University. Since graduation she has been working in hospice and creating art. She is currently doing case management at the Maitri residence for people with AIDS in San Francisco.

Mark Brasuell was born in Texas and moved to Colorado in 1987. He is a visual artist and founding member of EDGE Gallery and teaches at Metro Community College. Brasuell has an MFA in Painting, Sculpture, and Intermedia Arts from The University of Denver.

Julian T. Brolaski is the author of the chapbooks Hellish Death Monsters (Spooky Press, 2001), Letters to Hank Williams (True West Press, 2003), The Daily Usonian (Atticus/Finch, 2004), Madame Bovary’s Diary (Cy Press, 2005), Buck in a Corridor (flynpyntar, 2008) and the blog herm of warsaw. Xir first book gowanus atropolis is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse. Brolaski lives in Brooklyn where xe writes poetry, serves as a Litmus Press editor, plays country music in The Low & the Lonesome, and curates Mongrel Vaudeville.

Reed Bye is the author of Join the Planets: New and Selected Poems (United Artists Books 2005), Passing Freaks and Graces, Gaspar Still in His Cage, and Some Magic at the Dump. A CD of original songs, Long Way Around was released in 2005 by Farfalla/ McMillan and Parrish. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies including Nice to See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan, The Angel Hair Anthology, Sleeping on the Wing, and Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Colorado, and teaches poetry writing workshops and courses in classic and contemporary literary studies and contemplative poetics at Naropa University.

Marcus Civin is a writer and visual artist. Marcus was part of a critique group initiated by kari edwards in the summer of 2005 that included Fran Blau, Rob Halpern, Taylor Brady, Tanya Hollis, Joseph Lease, Donna de la Perrière and others. Marcus is the cover artist for edwards’ obedience and collaborated with edwards on a print for Spuyten Duyvil, Marking My Flesh with Essential Tethers. After edwards passed away, Marcus helped organize a memorial co-hosted by the California College of the Arts Writing Program and Small Press Traffic in San Francisco. Marcus completed his MFA in Studio Art at University of California, Irvine, Spring 2009.

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 forthcoming collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Books, 2010). CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He invites you to visit him online at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com and also with his friends at http://PhillySound.blogspot.com

E. Tracy Grinnell is the author of Helen: A Fugue (published in Belladonna Elders Series #1, 2008), Some Clear Souvenir (O Books, 2006), and Music or Forgetting (O Books, 2001), as well as the limited edition chapbooks Leukadia (Trafficker Press, 2008), Hell and Lower Evil (Lyre Lyre Pants on Fire, 2008), Humoresque (Blood Pudding/Dusie #3, 2008) Quadriga, a collaboration with Paul Foster Johnson (gong chapbooks, 2006), Of the Frame (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2004), and Harmonics (Melodeon Poetry Systems, 2000). She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and edits Litmus Press and Aufgabe, an annual journal of poetry and translations.

Rob Halpern is the author of Rumored Place (Krupskaya Books, 2004) and Disaster Suites (Palm Press, 2009). His collaboration with Taylor Brady, Snow Sensitive Skin (Atticus / Finch 2007), will soon be reissued by Displaced Press. Music for Porn is also 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,” appears in the Review of Contemporary Fiction alongside his own essay on Perec. Rob is an active participant in the Nonsite Collective. He lives and teaches in San Francisco.

HR Hegnauer is a writer and book designer who currently lives in Denver, Colorado. She was the first recipient of the kari edward’s memorial scholarship from Naropa University where she graduated with her MFA in Writing & Poetics. She maintains a website of her design work at hrhegnauer.com.

Jen Hofer is a poet, translator, interpreter, teacher, knitter, and urban cyclist. Her recent publications include The Route, a collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos, 2008), sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre, a translation from Dolores Dorantes by Mexican poet Dolores Dorantes (Counterpath Press and Kenning Editions, 2008), and lip wolf, a translation of Mexican poet Laura Solórzano’s lobo de labio (Action Books, 2007). Her forthcoming books are from the valley of death (Ponzipo), Laws (Dusie Books), one (Palm Press), a translation of Mexican poet Myriam Moscona’s Negro marfil (Les Figues Press), and a translation of Guatemalan poet Alan Mills’ Síncopes (Piedra Santa). She lives in Los Angeles, where recently she has been making hand-sewn quilts out of paper as part of the “Natural Habitats” project.

Visual artist Tanya Hollis lives and works in San Francisco, where she first met kari in 2004. kari’s encouragement and support culminated in Hollis’ first exhibition of work in the Bay area, with kari’s partner, artist Fran Blau.

Brenda Iijima is the author of Animate, Inanimate Aims (Litmus Press) and Around Sea (O Books) as well as numerous chapbooks including Rabbit Lesson (Fewer & Further) and Subsistence Equipment (Faux Press). Her visual art currently consists of collage, spray painting and drawing in combination. She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs.

Lisa Jarnot is the author of four collections of poetry including the recent Night Scenes (Flood Editions). She lives in New York City and works as a landscape gardener.

erica kaufman is the author of censory impulse (factory school, 2009).

Kevin Killian is a San Francisco novelist, poet, art writer, critic and playwright.  His books include Bedrooms Have Windows, Shy, Little Men, Arctic Summer, Argento Series, I Cry Like a Baby, and Action Kylie.

Wendy Kramer is a poet living in San Francisco. Her play, Trademark Girls: Fourth Wave Feminists Fight for Their Right to Personhood, was recently performed at Poet’s Theatre.

Joseph Lease’s critically acclaimed books of poetry include Broken World (Coffee House Press) and Human Rights (second edition forthcoming from Talisman House). His poem “’Broken World’ (For James Assatly)” was selected for The Best American Poetry 2002 (Scribner). His poems have also been featured on NPR and published in The AGNI 30th Anniversary Poetry Anthology, Bay Poetics, New American Writing, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Talisman, Volt, Fence, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Thomas Fink’s book A Different Sense of Power: Problems of Community in Late-Twentieth Century U.S. Poetry includes extensive critical analysis of Lease’s poetry. Lease is an Associate Professor of Writing and Literature and the Chair of the MFA Program in Writing at California College of the Arts.

Rachel Levitsky’s second book, NEIGHBOR, is published by Ugly Duckling Presse (2009). She has taught poetry workshops at Woodland Pattern, Naropa University, Poets House, the Poetry Project and Pratt Institute. Currently, she teaches writing courses at Lang College in Manhattan and at Arthur Kill Prison in Staten Island. She is a founding member of Belladonna*.

Joan MacDonald is a visual artist whose work often includes writing. Her art includes painting, assemblage, drawing and multi-media installations. She was born in Detroit, Michigan and moved to Colorado in 1975. She earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University of Denver and a Master of Fine Arts Degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her work has been shown locally, nationally and internationally. Joan has been a member of a Denver cooperative gallery, Edge Gallery, since 1997. joanmacdonald@bravehost.com.

Bill Marsh lives in Queens, NY, where he co-directs Factory School, a learning and production collective engaged in publishing, action research, and community-based organization. He also teaches writing and communication at Queensborough Community College.

Chris Martin is the author of American Music, selected by C. D. Wright for the Hayden Carruth Award and published by Copper Canyon. He proudly featured sections from a day in the life of p. in Puppy Flowers, the journal he edited from San Francisco, Minnesota, and Brooklyn, where he currently resides.

Montréal based writer and visual artist Yedda Morrison was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her books include Darkness (chapter 1) (Little Red Leaves, 2009), Girl Scout Nation (Displaced Press, 2008), My Pocket Park (Dusie Press, 2007), Co (Collaborations with Bruce Andrews, Roof Books, 2006) and Crop (Kelsey Street Press, 2003). A new book is forthcoming from Make Now Press in Los Angeles. yeddamorrison.com

Eileen Myles is a poet (Sorry, Tree, School of Fish, Not Me, etc.) who writes fiction (Cool for You, Chelsea Girls), and whose The Importance of Being Iceland/Travel Essays in Art, for which she received a Warhol/Creative Capital grant, is just out from Semiotext(e)/MIT. She was the Artistic Director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project in the 80s. In 1992 she conducted an openly female write-in campaign for President of the United States. She is now a Professor Emeritus of Writing at UCSD. She writes for Parkett, The Believer, Vice, The Nation, The Stranger, AnOther Magazine, and elsewhere. The Inferno/A Poet’s Novel will probably be out next year. She lives in New York.

Akilah Oliver is the author of A Toast in the House of Friends, (Coffee House Press, 2009), the she said dialogues: flesh memory (Smokeproof/Erudite Fangs, 1999, Winner of the PEN Beyond Margins Award). Oliver’s work is featured on the CD “Matching Half,” with Anne Waldman and Ambrose Bye, which won CAConrad’s “sexiest poet alive” award in 2008. Her chapbooks include: a (A)ugust (Yo-yo Labs, 2007) and The Putterer’s Notebook (Belladonna, 2006). She is faculty at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She held the Distinguished Author position in the Creative Writing Department at Long Island University (Spring, 2008) and was curator of the Monday Night reading series at the Poetry Project in NYC (2007-2008). She is a founding member of the feminist avant-garde performance group The Sacred Naked Nature Girls (1993-1999). She currently makes her home in Brooklyn, NY.

Donna de la Perrière is the author of True Crime (Talisman House, 2009). Her poems have appeared in Agni, American Letters and Commentary, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Fingers Review, The New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly, New American Writing, Parthenon West Review, Volt, and other journals, as well as in Faux Press’ 2006 Bay Poetics anthology. The recipient of a 2009 Fund for Poetry award, she teaches in the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs at California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University, curates the Bay Area Poetry Marathon reading series at San Francisco’s The Lab gallery and performance space, and lives near downtown Oakland with the poet Joseph Lease and the cat Little Sister.

Tim Peterson is a poet, critic, and editor living in Brooklyn, NY. Peterson’s books of poetry include Since I Moved In, which received the Gil Ott Award from Chax Press, Cumulus (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and Trinkets Mashed into a Blender (Faux Press/e). Peterson edits EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts, and also edited a special issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac (MIT Press) on “New Media Poetry and Poetics.” Other critical work has appeared in EBR, Harvard Review, Transgender Tapestry, and the book Burning Interiors: David Shapiro’s Poetry and Poetics (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). Peterson is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at CUNY Graduate Center.

Ellen Redbird is a poet from California. She has an MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado. There she took a class on writing the queer text from kari edwards in 2001. In 2002, Ellen Redbird completed a critical thesis on kari edwards’ novel a day in the life of p.. She started the tiny Pyriform Press and edited five issues of the journal Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature. A scene from her poetry-based play, Verve of Verge, in which no gender pronouns appear, was performed as part of the Yockadot Poetics Theatre Festival in Alexandria, Virginia, 2007. Other creative texts by Ellen Redbird can be found in journals, including Chain, Bombay Gin, Score, For Immediate Release, Muse Apprentice Guild, El Pobre Mouse, and One Less.

Author of 30 books of poetry, poem-plays, fiction, and criticism, Leslie Scalapino’s most recent books include Day Ocean State of Stars’ Night published by Green Integer in 2007, and It’s go in horizontal/Selected Poems 1974-2006 published by UC Press, Berkeley in 2008.

Michael Smoler (b. 1973, Chicago) is a collage artist and poet, living in Los Angeles. He is the author of five small press chapbooks, including in envy in smoke (The Healthy Unhealthy Press, NY, 2004), A Quilt Film About the Death of Jack Spicer, a collaborative prose poem with Coryander Friend (The Healthy Unhealthy Press, NY, 2003), worn broke (A Ringing Press, Boulder, CO, 1999), plot (Third Ear Press, Boulder, CO, 1998), and The Candy Was Good (Third Ear Press, Boulder, CO, 1997). Smoler has studied and taught at Naropa University, in Boulder, CO, where he received a B.A. in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (1998), and has also studied and taught at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA.

Sherman Souther is a physician, poet and translator. A friend and classmate of kari edwards, he graduated from Naropa University with an MFA in Creative Writing. xStream, Puppyflowers, For Immediate Release, Many Mountains Moving, Tinfish, and Hawaii Review contain recent work, as well as the anthology, Honolulu Stories. His chapbook, Surgical ‘Bru-Ez, is available from Tinfish Press.

Eleni Stecopoulos is a San Francisco poet and independent scholar. She is the author of Autoimmunity (Taxt, 2006) and the forthcoming collection Armies of Compassion (Palm Press, 2009). A book-length poem, Earth Also is a Private Language, is in progress. Co-recipient, with The Poetry Center, of a Creative Work Fund grant for 2008-2010, she curates a program series called “The Poetics of Healing: Creative Investigations in Art, Medicine, and Somatic Practice” and is writing a creative-critical book on the topic.

Poet Anne Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community for over 40 years as writer, sprechstimme performer, professor, editor, “magpie” scholar, infra-structure and cultural/political activist. In 1974 she co-founded The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University, the first Buddhist inspired school in the West and currently serves as Artistic Director of its celebrated Summer Writing Program. Waldman is the author of over 40 books of poetry including Kill or Cure, Marriage: A Sentence, Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, and the poetic text: Outrider. Her most recent book-length poem is Manatee/Humanity (Penguin Poets, 2009).