aurelio asiain was born in Mexico City in 1960. He is a founding editor of the literary journal (paréntesis), based in Mexico City.

hernán bravo varela was born in Mexico City in 1979. His most recent books include: OWcios de ciega pertenencia (Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, 1999), Nueve poemas (Cuadernos de Wlodecaballos, 2001) and Comunión (Ediciones del Ermitaño, 2000). With Ernesto Lumbreras, he edited El manantial latente, an anthology of writing by younger Mexican poets (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 2002).

jill darling edits the online literary journal The Nieve Roja Review, and has had work published in places such as Bombay Gin, Phoebe, and Upstairs at Duroc.

thom donovan currently lives in Buffalo, NY and has published works in Kenning, Kiosk, and Potes and Poets Press.

dolores dorantes was born in Córdoba, Veracruz in 1973. Her most recent books include SexoPUROsexoVELOZ (Cuadernos del Wlodecaballo, 2002), Para Bernardo: un eco (mub editoraz, 2000) and Poemas para niños (Ediciones El Tucán de Virginia, 1999). She is a founding editor of Editorial Frugal, which counts among its activities publication of the monthly broadside series Hoja Frugal, printed in editions of 4000 and distributed free throughout Mexico. Translations of her poems into English have been published in the anthology Sin puertas visibles (ed. Jen Hofer, University of Pittsburgh and Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2003) and in the magazine Kenning. She lives in Nogales, Sonora, where she is news editor of El Diario de la Frontera.

kari edwards is winner of New Langton Arts’ Bay Area Award in literature (2002), author of Iduna (O Books, 2003), a day in the life of p. (subpress collective, 2002), and a diary of lies (Belladonna #27 by Belladonna Books, 2002). edwards’ work can also be found in: Bombay Gin, Belight Fiction, Mirage/Period(ical), Van Gogh’s Ear, PuppyFlower, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, and Narrativity.

jorge esquinca was born in Mexico City in 1957, and has lived in Guadalajara since 1968. Uccelo, a long poem made up of 30-odd fragments, was originally published as a chapbook in 2001 by the small press Wlodecaballos, based in Guadalajara. His other books include Isla de las manos reunidas (Aldus, 1997), Invisible línea visible. Antología personal (Arlequín, 2002), and Vena cava (Era, 2002), and a children’s book titled Piedra (una fábula) (PetraEdiciones, forthcoming). He has published Spanish-language translations of works by many writers, including W.S. Merwin, H.D., Pierre Reverdy, and Henri Michaux. He currently works as cultural events coordinator at the José Luis Martínez Bookstore, through the Fondo de Cultura Económica.

roger farr lives in Vancouver, BC, where he runs with the Kootenay School of Writing collective. Recent writing appears or is forthcoming in Ecopoetics, TinWsh, W, and West Coast Line.

dan featherston has published sections of United States in 26, House Organ, and Range. Other recent / forthcoming work in Chicago Review, Ploughshares, Ur Vox, and the chapbook The Clock Maker’s Memoir: 1-12 (Handwritten Press, 2002). A chapbook will appear later in 2003 with Quarry Press, as well as a reprinting of Rooms (Paper Brain Press, 1998).

jesús gardea was born in Delicias, Chihuahua in 1939, and died in Mexico City in 2000. He wrote many novels and collections of short stories, including Angel de los veranos (1980), El árbol cuando se apague (1997), Alba sombría (1985) and La ventana hundida (1992).

dieter m. gräf was born in 1960 in Ludwigshafen, Germany, and lives in Cologne. He has published three volumes of poetry with Suhrkamp: Rauschstudie: Vater + Sohn, 1994; Treibender Kopf, 1997; Westrand, 2003.

jorge fernández granados was born in Mexico City in 1965. He is the author of five books of poetry, including the Resurrección (Editorial Aldus, 1995), El cristal (Joaquín Mortiz, 2000), and Los hábitos de la ceniza (Ediciones Era, 2000). Translations of his poems into English have been published in the anthology Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (ed. Mónica de la Torre and Michael Wiegers, Copper Canyon Press, 2002).

jen hofer edited and translated Sin puertas visibles: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Mexican Women (University of Pittsburgh Press and Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2003). Her recent books of poetry include slide rule (subpress, 2002), and The 3:15 Experiment (with Lee Ann Brown, Danika Dinsmore, and Bernadette Mayer, The Owl Press, 2001). She is co-editor, with Rod Smith, of Aerial #10, a forthcoming critical volume on the work of the poet Lyn Hejinian. Her writings against the war in Iraq and the war on terror can be found in the most recent issue of A.BACUS, and in the anthology Enough (O Books, 2003); other poems, prose texts and translations appear in recent issues of 26, Conundrum, kenning, kiosk, and NO: A Magazine of the Arts.

saúl ibargoyen was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1930, and has lived in Mexico since 1976. He has worked extensively as a poet, prose writer, translator, journalist, editor and teacher, and is the author of more than 50 books, most recently Dispersions (Écrits des Forges/Éditions Phi, Canada, 2002), El escriba de pie (Fundación Pascual, 2002), the novel Toda la tierra (Ediciones y GráWcos Eón/Universidad de Tijuana, México, 2002), and Grito de perro, (Praxis [Mexico] and Caracol al galope [Uruguay], 2001). From 1977 to 1994, he was editor-in-chief of the journal Plural, and he currently edits the Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, co-published by Edicones y GráWcos Eón and the University of Texas, El Paso.

michael ives is a musician and writer living in the Hudson Valley. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous periodicals, here and abroad. He is currently at work on a collection of essays devoted to his experiences as a jazz musician.

andrew joron is a poet and translator living in Berkeley. His latest collection of poems is FATHOM (Black Square Editions, 2003).

amanda katz lives in Brooklyn, New York.

ben lerner is originally from Topeka, Kansas. Other “Lichtenberg Figures” can be found in recent or shortly forthcoming editions of The Beloit Poetry Journal, CROWD, The Denver Quarterly, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Post Road, Slope, and Verse.

lisa lubasch lives in New York City and is the author of How Many More of Them Are You? (Avec Books, 1999) and Vicinities (Avec Books, 2001). A new book of poems entitled To Tell the Lamp will be published by Avec in 2004. She is also the translator of Paul Éluard’s A Moral Lesson, forthcoming from Green Integer Books, and is one of several editors of Double Change, a web journal dedicated to French-American interaction in poetry.

ernesto lumbreras was born in Ahualulco del Mercado, Jalisco in 1966. He has written children’s plays, artists’ monographs, and numerous books of poetry including Clamor de agua, Espuela para demorar el viaje, Encaminador de almas, and El cielo (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998). Translations of his poems into English can be found in the anthology Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (ed. Mónica de la Torre and Michael Wiegers, Copper Canyon Press, 2002).

michael magee is the author of Morning Constitutional (Handwritten Press, 2001), MS (Spuyten Duyvil, 2003) and Emancipating Pragmatism: Emerson, Jazz and Experimental Writing (U Alabama, 2004). He edits Combo, teaches at Rhode Island School of Design and lives with his wife and daughter in Pawtucket, RI.

barbara maloutas just completed her manuscript, In a Combination of Practices. She is assistant chair in the Communication Arts department of Otis College of Art and Design where she has taught typography and design. She spends summer vacations in Greece on Porto outside Ermioni on the Peloponnesos.

ange mlinko is the author of Matinees (Zoland Books, 1999). She lives in Brooklyn.

k. silem mohammad lives in Santa Cruz, CA. His book Deer Head Nation was published in 2003 by Tougher Disguises Press. You can visit his blog lime tree at http://limetree.blogspot.com.

myriam moscona was born in Mexico city in 1955. She has published six books of poetry, including Negro MarWl (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and oak editorial, 2000), Vísperas, (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996), and El árbol de los nombres (Cuarto Menguante, Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco, 1992). She has translated, among others, Kenneth Rexroth and William Carlos Williams, and she worked for many years as anchorwoman of a widely-acclaimed cultural affairs program on Channel 22, a Mexico-City based public television station. Translations of her poems into English can be found in Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women (ed. Forrest Gander, Milkweed Editions, 1993).

lisa pearson’s fictions have recently appeared in 3rd Bed, Bombay Gin, LIT, Chelsea, Quarterly West, among others. She co-edited the anthology Northwest Edge: Deviant Fictions, and currently lives in Los Angeles.

josé luis pérez-espino was born in Camargo, Chihuahua in 1969. His first book, Neoberlín, was published by Ediciones del Azar in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, in 1999.

lance phillips lives in Charlotte, NC with his wife and son. His first book, Corpus Socius, appeared in May 2002 from Ahsahta Press. Recent work has appeared in Fence, The Gig, and Wordforword.info.

michelle naka pierce was born in Tokyo, Japan, her mother’s homeland. She has taught at Sakuragaoka koko in Yokohama and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She is currently an Assistant Professor and Director of the Writing Center at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

candace pirnak lives in Rhode Island and currently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. She would like to acknowledge “Blindspot”’s enormous debt to Guy Davenport’s elegant essay on Meatyard.

juan manuel portillo was born in Ciudad Juárez in 1967. He studied industrial engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico in Ciudad Juárez, and is currently finishing his Master’s in Linguistics at the University of Texas, El Paso, and teaching poetry at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Júarez. He is a founding editor of Editorial Frugal, which counts among its activities publication of the monthly broadside series Hoja Frugal, printed in editions of 4000 and distributed free throughout Mexico. He has published translations into Spanish of Paul Celan, Geoffrey Hill and John Taggart, and his own poems have appeared in a number of literary magazines, including Border Senses, Entorno, Puente Libre, and Tierra Adentro. His first book, Cantus Firmus, will be published later this year.

stephen potter’s poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, ixnay, Mirage #4, and elsewhere. He received his ma in writing from Temple University in 1997. The poem “Four Fragments” is from his recently completed manuscript, Urradiant. He lives, writes, and shoots photos in Philadelphia.

patrick pritchett is the author of Reside and Burn: Doxology for Joan of Arc. He is a contributing editor for Facture and has taught at Naropa’s Summer Writing Program.

chris pusateri’s poems and reviews have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Volt, Antennae, Electronic Poetry Review, and others. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

sarah riggs is the author of Word Sightings: Poetry and Visual Media in Stevens, Bishop, & O’Hara (Routledge, 2002). Her poetry appears in New American Writing, Free Verse, and Rife. She translates contemporary French poetry, and lives in Paris.

standard schaefer occasionally teaches writing at Otis College of Art and Design. In addition to literary criticism, he is also a financial writer specializing in economic exploitation independent of labor practices. His first book of poetry Nova was selected for the National Poetry Series in 1999 and published by Sun and Moon Books.

kyle schlesinger lives in BuValo, New York. He is the editor and printer for Cuneiform Press, and collaboratively edits Kiosk: A Journal of Poetry, Poetics, and Experimental Prose. He is the author of The Perishable Press Limited (1964–2003) and writings have recently appeared in Goodfoot, Conundrum, and FLASH+CARD.

andrew shields was born in 1964 in Detroit and lives in Basel, Switzerland. His poems, prose, and translations have appeared in journals on both sides of the Atlantic. His manuscript of selected poems by Dieter M. Gräf is looking for a publisher, as is his own poetry manuscript Your Mileage May Vary.

laura solórzano was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1961. She is the author, most recently, of lobo de labio (Cuadernos de Wlodecaballos, 2001) and Semilla de Ficus (Ediciones Rimbaud, 1999). She is on the editorial board of the literary arts magazine Tragaluz, and currently teaches film studies at the Centro de Arte Audiovisual in Guadalajara. Translations of her poems into English have been published in the anthology Sin puertas visibles (ed. Jen Hofer, University of Pittsburgh and Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2003), and in the online magazine HOW2 (www.departments.bucknell.edu/stadler_center/how2).

christopher stackhouse’s work has appeared in Fence, nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, Big Fish, NY Arts. The forthcoming book Seismosis (Pub Lush Press) features his drawings with poem-essays by John Keene. “The Sacred History of the Earth” is one of 21 Haiku to be published by Bombora House Editions in collaboration with Melinda Brown and Christopher Koser. He is a Cave Canem African-American Writers Fellow, and a committee member of The National Visual Artists Guild.

stacy szymaszek lives in Milwaukee where she is coeditor of Traverse Literary Journal, curator of several reading series, and Literary Program Manager for Woodland Pattern Book Center. The first issue of her new project Oranges and Meat is due out in September 2003. You can reach her at szymasze@execpc.com.

alejandro tarrab was born in Mexico City in 1972. His books include Siete Cantáridas (Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2001), Andoré (Editorial Flor de Cobre, 2001) and Centauros (Ediciones del Ermitaño, 2001), and his poems have been anthologized in Prisma, an anthology of Hispano-American avant-garde poetry (forthcoming from Alfaguara) and El manantial latente (Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, 2002). His poems and critical writings have been published in La Gaceta del Fondo de Cultura Económico, La Jornada Semanal, and (paréntesis).He is currently studying toward his Master’s degree in Iberoamerican Literature at the National Automonous University of Mexico.

rodrigo toscano’s books include: The Disparities (Green Integer), Partisans (O Books) and Platform (Atelos). Recent work has appeared in Perspektive 43 + 44, “Avantgarde Under Net Conditions” (Germany), Open Letter (Canada), Kenning Audio Editions, Rattappalaxx No. 9, “Recent Brazilian and American Poetry,” and in the forthcoming anthology of Mexican criticism, Tradiciones Torcidas. Toscano lives in New York City. RT5LE9@aol.com.

genya turovskaya is originally from Kiev, Ukraine. She is a poet and translator currently living in New York City. She is the author of Calendar(Ugly Duckling Press 2002). Her poetry and translations from Russian have appeared in or are forthcoming from 6 ? 6 (Six Poets ? Six Pages), Murmur, Poets and Poems, TextOnly (Moscow), and The Germ, among others.

sergio valero was born in Mexico City in 1969. He is a founding member of the editorial board of eldorado ediciones. He is the author of Cuaderno de Alejandra (Fondo Editorial Tierra Adentro, 1997) and Valga la noche (Ediciones Eloísa, de la Aires, 2003). He regularly writes about literature and music, and has published poems and critical texts in numerous magazines and cultural supplements, including El Ángel, Crónica dominical, Etcétera, Letras libres, (paréntesis), Periódico de poesía and Vuelta. He is known as El Pollo (The Chicken).

paloma villegas was born in Mexico City in 1951. After completing her studies in Spanish Language and Literature, she lived in Cataluña for a number of years. She currently works at Ediciones Era, a small literary press based in Mexico City. She has adapted texts for radio, and has published literary criticism, feminist theory, chronicles, interviews and translations from English to Spanish. She is the author of a book of poetry, Mapas (Ediciones Era, 1981), and a novel, La luz oblicua (Ediciones Era, 1995).

iliana villanueva was born in Chihuahua, Chihuahua in 1980. Her first chapbook, Tuérceles el Dios, was published by Onomatopeya Editores in Chihuahua in 1996. Her poems have been published in various journals, including Andamios, Fronteras and the cultural supplement to the newspaper El Reto, as well as in an anthology of women poets from the state of Chihuahua titled Químicamente puras (ed. Rafael Ávila, Instituto Chihuahuense de la Cultura, 1997). In Fall 2003, she will begin graduate studies in Latin American Literature at uc Irvine.

rosmarie waldrop’s most recent books are the memoir, Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabes (Wesleyan University Press), Blindsight (New Directions) and Love, Like Pronouns (Omnidawn).

dana ward lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where he edits Cy Press. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pom2, Anomaly, Torch & Forklift.

craig watson’s latest books are True News (Instance Press, 2002) and Free Will (Roof Books, 2000). He lives and works in Rhode Island.

africa wayne lives in New York City and curates the bbr reading Series in Brooklyn. She is the editor of Dürer in the Window, ReXexions on Art by Barbara Guest (ulae and Roof Books). The poems included in this issue come from two collections entitled Shelley Winters and Tiny Pony.