Bios

Robert West's poems have previously appeared in venues including American Life in Poetry, Christian Science Monitor, The Cortland Review, Light, Pembroke Magazine, Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, and Tar River Poetry. The author of two chapbooks, Best Company (2005) and Out of Hand (2007), he teaches English at Mississippi State University.

John Milbury-Steen has published or will publish work in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, Bumbershoot, The Centrifugal Eye, Chimaera, Christianity and Literature, Contemporary Sonnet, Dark Horse, The Deronda Review (Neovictorian/Cochlea), Kayak, Hellas, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Listening Eye, Lucid Rhythms, The Piedmont Literary Review, Scholia Satyrica, Shenandoah, Shattercolors, the Shit Creek Review and Umbrella. 

Jeff Holt is a licensed professional counselor who lives in Plano, TX with his wife, Sarena, and their lovely twin daughters, Julia and Allison, who are almost a year old. Sarena and Jeff are also nursing the emotional wounds of three cats—Charlotte, Spooky, and Maizie—who are still adjusting to the loss of status necessitated by the arrival of the girls.

F.J. Bergmann frequents Wisconsin, and has no literary academic credentials, but hangs out a lot with folks who do. Publication credits include Alimentum, Margie, Mississippi Review, Opium, and Southern Poetry Review, as well as three chapbooks, the most recent being Constellation of the Dragonfly (Plan B Press, 2008). Further iniquities may be viewed at fibitz.com .

Denis Loney's work has appeared in 32 Poems and the Sewanee Theological Review, and his manuscript, Casualties of Conveyance, was a finalist for the Hecht Prize. He received a BA from Creighton University and an MA in Writing from The Johns Hopkins University. In 2006, he received a fellowship from the DC Council on the Arts and Humanities.

Bob Watts grew up in rural North Carolina and holds the Creative Writing Ph.D. in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia.  His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, New York Quarterly, and other journals.  His first collection, Past Providence, won the 2004 Stanzas Prize from David Robert Books. He teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor at Lehigh University.

Stephen Collington studied English and East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, and Comparative Literature at the University of Tokyo.  His interest in Asian literature dates from his first enchanted encounter with the Chinese character itself, black-ink epitome of Emerson's famed dictum, "Language is fossil poetry."  He has never been to Sichuan, but when he visited neighbouring Hunan in the 1990s, the slogans from the Cultural Revolution were still visible on the farmhouse walls.  He would like to dedicate "How long is life?" to

John Whitworth is one of those fattish, baldish, backward-looking, provincial poets in which England is so rich (perhaps too rich).  His ninth collection, Being the Bad Guy, was published by Peterloo in November 2007.  Les Murray likes it.  Good on him.  You might also consider Writing Poetry published by A & C Black, one of those how-to books; it has run to a second