Maria Eliza Hamilton Abegunde is a Yoruba ancestral priestess and Reiki Master. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, and has received fellowships from Sacatar (Brazil) and Ragdale Foundations. Her work has been published in Margin, Warplands, nocturnes, Beyond the Frontier, Knowing Stones, and Jane’s Stories.
H. G. Carrillo is the author of Loosing My Espanish, a novel published by Anchor Books and in hardcover by Pantheon Books. He divides his time between Ithaca, New York, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is at work on a novel.
John Michael Cummings‘ short stories have appeared in more than seventy-five literary journals, including North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, South Dakota Review, Sou’wester, Louisiana Literature, Concho River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Chattahoochee Review, and Iowa Review. Twice he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His novella, The House of My Father, was a finalist in the 2006 Miami University novella contest. Other awards include semifinalist in the 2004 Winnow Press First Book Award for Fiction. His first novel is scheduled to be published by Penguin in mid-2008. He is a native of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and today lives in New York with his wife, Susan, and their cat, Sentry.
Gary Fincke‘s fourth collection of stories, Sorry I Worried You, won the Flannery O’ Connor Prize and was published by Georgia. His next book is a memoir, The Canals of Mars, due from Michigan State in late 2007. He directs the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University.
Albert Goldbarth‘s latest books are The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems 1972–2007 (Graywolf Press) and Griffin (Essay Press). He lives in Wichita, Kansas—someone has to.
Susan Hahn is the author of seven books of poetry. Her first play premiered in 2005. Currently, she is working on a second play and a novel.
Judith Hall is the author of four books, most recently Three Trios (Northwestern, 2007), and the illustrator of Poetry Forum (Bayeux Arts, 2007), a collaboration with David Lehman. She has received Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill, and NEA Awards.
Red Hawk was the Hodder Fellow in the Humanities at Princeton University. His poems are in Atlantic, Poetry, Black Warrior Review, and Sun. His latest books are The Sioux Dog Dance (Cleveland State University, 1991); The Way of Power (Hohm Press, 1996); The Art of Dying (Hohm Press, 1999); and Wreckage with a Beating Heart (Hohm Press, 2005). He teaches at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.
Katherine M. Hedeen has a doctorate in Hispanic literatures from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently an assistant professor of Spanish and International Studies at Kenyon College. She specializes in Latin American poetry and has written about and translated numerous contemporary authors from the region.
Lewis Hyde is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College. He is at work on a book in defense of our “cultural commons,” that vast store of ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past.
James Fleming Jones Jr. is currently president and Trinity College professor in the humanities at Trinity College. He is the author of three books and more than thirty articles and other scholarly pieces.
Ted Kooser served two terms as poet laureate consultant to the Library of Congress, and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his book of poems, Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon Press, 2004.) He is a retired life insurance executive who lives in the country near the village of Garland, Nebraska.
Don Lee is the author of the novel Country of Origin, which won an American Book Award, and the story collection Yellow, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. A new novel, Wrack and Ruin, is forthcoming from W. W. Norton in April 2008. Formerly the editor of the literary journal Ploughshares, he now teaches creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul.
Phillis Levin is the author of three books of poetry: Temples and Fields, The Afterimage, and Mercury, and is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. Her fourth collection of poems, May Day, will be published by Penguin in May 2008. Her work has recently appeared in New Yorker, New Republic, and Atlantic, and she is the recipient of a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She lives in New York and is a professor of English and poet-in-residence at Hofstra University.
Abelardo Linares (Seville, 1952), a major contemporary Spanish poet, is the author of Mitos [Myths] (Seville: Calle del Aire, 1979); Sombras: 1979–1985 [Shadows](Seville: Renacimiento, 1986); Espejos: 1986–1991 [Mirrors] (Valencia: Pretextos, 1991), winner of the Critics’ Prize; and Panorama (Hotel Internacional, 1995). In addition to poetry, Linares is very active as a bookseller and director of Renacimiento, one of Spain’s foremost publishers.
Víctor Rodríguez Núñez is one of Cuba’s most noteworthy contemporary writers. He has published eleven books of poetry, many of them recipients of literary awards, most recently the Fray Luis de León Prize (Spain 2005) and the Leonor Poetry Prize (Spain 2006). He is currently an assistant professor of Spanish at Kenyon College.
Paul Otremba‘s poetry has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, and American Literary Review.
Roger Rosenblatt is a playwright and novelist. Over the past two years he has had two plays staged off-Broadway. His novel, Lapham Rising, was published by Ecco Press in 2006. The paperback was released this May. A new novel, Beet, is forthcoming in 2008 from Ecco.
Anne Sanow‘s stories have appeared recently in Crab Orchard Review, Shenandoah, and New Orleans Review, and she won the 2007 Jack Hodgins Founders’ Award for Fiction for her story “Rub al-Khali,” which was published in The Malahat Review. She has completed a collection of stories set in Saudia Arabia, and is working on a novel.
Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian-American poet. In addition to being nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, DMQ Review, Drunken Boat, Flyway, Mississippi Review, and The Poetry of Arab Women. She resides in northern California with her husband and two sons.
Katherine Soniat‘s The Fire Setters is available through Web Del Sol Online Chapbook Series. Her fourth collection, Alluvial, was published by Bucknell University Press, and A Shared Life won the Iowa Poetry Prize (IUP). Work is forthcoming in River Styx, Willow Springs, Iowa Review, Southern Review, Poetry East, Tiferet, and Hotel Amerika.
Page Hill Starzinger lives in downtown Manhattan and is copy director at Aveda. She has poems forthcoming from Colorado Review and Pleiades.
Miller Williams has authored thirty-three books. His most recent work is Making a Poem: Some Thoughts about Poetry and the People Who Write It, from LSU Press in 2006. The University of Missouri Press has published a collection of essays by thirteen scholars and poets, edited by Michael Burns, under the title Miller Williams and the Poetry of the Particular. He and his daughter, singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, frequently perform a tandem gig entitled “Poetry Said / Poetry Sung,” in which he reads a poem and she sings one of her songs, back and forth.
