DAN ALBERGOTTI is the author of The Boatloads (BOA Editions, 2008), selected by Edward Hirsch as the winner of the 2007 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. In 2008, his poem “What They’re Doing” was selected for Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses. A graduate of the MFA program at UNC Greensboro and former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review, Albergotti currently teaches creative writing and literature courses and edits the online journal Waccamaw at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC.

FREDERICK W. BASSETT’s poems have appeared in more than forty journals and anthologies. Paraclete Press has published two books of “found” poetry that he created from Biblical lyrics — Love: The Song of Songs (2002) and Awake My Heart (1998). An Alabama native with a Ph.D. in Biblical literature from Emory University, he lives at Hilton Head, South Carolina, with his wife Peg.  

BRIAN BROWN lives in Fitzgerald, Georgia. He has recently published or has work forthcoming in Vain, Roanoke Review, Keyhole, Santa Clara Review, Inkwell, and Quercus Review, among others. He is a historian who has worked at the site of Jefferson Davis' capture and who has appeared on Georgia Public Television's Georgia Backroads. He is presently focused on creating a digital archive of Georgia during the Great Depression. He documents the endangered vernacular, architecture, and customs of the Wiregrass Region of southern Georgia, and he publishes the blog Vanishing South Georgia.

WILLIAM DORESKI's work has appeared in various electronic and print journals as well as in several collections, most recently Another Ice Age (AA Books, 2007).

ESTHER GREENLEAF MÜRER grew up in Indiana and now lives in Philadelphia. At 73 she considers herself an emerging poet. She has published literary translations from Norwegian and was the founding editor of Types & Shadows, the journal of the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Light Quarterly, Mimesis, The Ghazal Page, The Externalist, and New Verse News.  

SCOTT OWENS  is a graduate of the UNCG MFA program, co-editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review, author of “Musings” (a weekly poetry column in Outlook), and is the 2008 Visiting Writer at Catawba Valley Community College. His first full-length collection of poetry, The Fractured World, was published in August 2008 (Main Street Rag). He has authored two additional chapbooks: The Persistence of Faith (Sandstone Press, 1993) and Deceptively Like a Sound (Dead Mule, 2008). A third chapbook, The Book of Days, will be published by Dead Mule in January 2009. Scott Owens’ poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, North American Review, Poetry East, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cimarron Review, Greensboro Review, Chattahoochee Review, Cream City Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Cottonwood, among others. Born in Greenwood, SC, he now lives in Hickory, NC, where he teaches and coordinates the Poetry Hickory reading series.

CURT RODE lives in Fort Worth, Texas, where he teaches writing and American literature at Texas Christian University. His work has also appeared in The Sun Magazine, Florida Review, Sycamore Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review. He wishes he had something insightful to say here about either about his aesthetic or poetry in general, but not finding the words, he's not going to force the issue.  

JEFF SCHIFF is author of Anywhere in this Country (Mammoth Press), The Homily of Infinitude (Pennsylvania Review Press), The Rats of Patzcuaro (Poetry Link), Resources for Writing About Literature (HarperCollins), and Burro Heart (Mammoth Press). His work has appeared internationally in more than seventy periodicals, including Grand Street, The Ohio Review, Poet & Critic, The Louisville Review, Tendril, Pembroke Magazine, Carolina Review, Chicago Review, Hawaii Review, Southern Humanities Review, River City, Indiana Review, and The Southwest Review. He has taught at Columbia College Chicago since 1987.

CHERYL SNELL’s books include a novel, Shiva’s Arms (The Writer’s Lair Books), and four collections of poetry: Flower Half Blown (Finishing Line Press), Epithalamion (Little Poem Press), Samsara (Pudding House), and Prisoner’s Dilemma, winner of the 2008 Lopside Press chapbook competition. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times for poetry, and a Best of the Net for fiction. Snell serves as book reviews editor for Alsop Review, and blogs at http://shivasarms.blogspot.com and http://snellsisters.blogspot.com.