J.R. Campbell (“The First Jack”) is a native of Amherst, Texas, who has been a reporter, photographer and editor at nine newspapers in Texas and Colorado. His literary works have appeared in Ascent Aspirations, TPQ Online, The Cortland Review, Autumn Leaves, Machinery Press, Ancient Heart, Poems Niederngasse, Poetry Life and Times and other magazines.

David Caplan (“The Famous Writer”) lives in Chicago, where he works as a writer for a company that produces material about tax law. His stories have appeared in the Chicago Reader, Potpourri, Lost Magazine, and River Walk Journal.

James Cox (“The Fumerole”) lives in Whittier, North Carolina. He has published poetry in The Cherry Blossom Review, Silkworm, Short Poems, Pinesong, Barnwood, and in “Echoes Across the Blue Ridge” (The 2009 NetWest Anthology.) He is currently promoting his satirical novel “The Christmas Curmudgeon.” Taoist wild man, poet, dog lover, philosopher, old soul, cook, dishwasher, flower finder, father, healer, husband, aphorist, novelist, and real person.

Mychael Danna is a composer who has scored over fifty major films. He is known for weaving non-Western instruments into traditional orchestral scores, as well as blending electronic music into his work. He has worked with a wide range of directors, including Atom Egoyan, Denzel Washington, James Mangold, Billy Ray, Joel Schumacher, and Terry Gilliam. Among his most recent film scores are 500 Days of Summer, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Surf’s Up, Breach, and the Fox series Dollhouse.

Chelsea Debret  (“Strawberries”) is a recent graduate from the Creative Writing Program at San Francisco State University. She has been accepted at the Northern Arizona University and will be pursuing a Masters degree in Creative Writing next fall. This is Chelsea's first published piece of fiction. 

Andrea DeAngelis  (“dreamleak”) is at times a poet, writer, shutterbug, and musician. Her writing has recently appeared in Ginosko Literary Journal, Bolts of Silk, Word Riot, Denver Syntax, Galleys Online, and Writers Bloc. Andrea also sings and plays guitar in an indie rock band called MAKAR (www.makarmusic.com).

Gay Degani (“She Can't Say No”) has been published in anthologies, in THEMA Literary Journal and on-line at Night Train, 3 A.M. Magazine, 10Flash, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, Tattoo Highway, and Salt River Review.  Gay is the editor of EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles and blogs at http://wordsinplace.blogspot.com/.

Renee Evans (“A Late Lunch”) is a recent graduate of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale's MFA program. As a Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Roger, Fogged Clarity, and elsewhere.

Silvia Gheorghita (“Somewhere Else”) was born in Bucharest, Romania. For the past two years she has been living in the United States. She is working towards a B.A. degree in Communication and Photography at Wesleyan, a small women’s college in Macon, Georgia. She is one of the three people in Macon who ride a bicycle on these tortuous roads. Probably the only one who travels with a photo camera instead of a backpack. Her days are suffused with photography. She saves her nights for writing.

Aishwarya Jha (“Sonnet III”) lives in New Delhi, India, and is a freshman at LSE's External Programme.  She has been writing since she could hold a pen, but has only just begun submitting her work for publishing.  She finds inspiration in everyday life, Georgette Heyer's Regency novels and the Himalayas.

R.G. Johnson (“Crawlers”) was born in West Palm Beach Florida where he attended Santaluces High School and Palm Beach Atlantic College. Since he could pick up a pen, he has been writing poetry, music and short stories. He is an extremely opinionated human being with a deep love for all forms of artistic expression. He now lives in a small log cabin on a large piece of land in rural southeast Texas with the love of his life and three strange little dogs. He works finding jobs for seafarers. He is happy.

Lois Lowry is the Newbery Award-winning author of such celebrated classics as The Giver and Number the Stars. Her young adult books have explored such difficult issues as racism, terminal illness, and the Holocaust. She is currently involved with a stage production of her novel Gossamer, as well as working on her next book. She lives in Massachusetts.

Tyler McMahon (“The Last Thing You Remember, the Next Sound You Hear”) teaches fiction-writing at Hawai’i Pacific University in Honolulu. He has won the Gary Wilson Short Fiction Award, been a finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Three Penny Review, Sycamore Review, Hawai’i Review, Barrelhouse, Antioch Review, and elsewhere.

Travis Mills (“A Cowboy in Zambia”) is a writer and movie director.  He studied both at Arizona State University.  Having lived in South America and Africa, he draws on these experiences to explore a world of expatriates living in exotic Third World locations.  Recently, he has also had stories published by Dispatch Litareview and Our Stories.

Rafael Miguel Montes (“Sunday Homework”) is a Cultural Studies professor at St. Thomas University and a Cuban-American writer living and working in Miami. His literary work reflects his dual upbringing in the Cuban-American community of Hialeah, Florida, and the academic communities of a number of institutions of higher learning. His poetry has most recently appeared in Tattoo Highway, Conclave: A Journal of Character, The Honey Land Review, inscape (Kansas), Triggerfish Critical Review, Mastodon Dentist and DASH (Cal State-Fullerton). He is married to the far superior Cuban-American poet, Celia Lisset Alvarez.

Kyle Owens (“Paramour”) writes from his home in the Appalachian Mountains which overlooks a field of horses.  His poem "Rhapsody's Gaze" is posted at Dark and Dreary Magazine and a portion of his verse drama "Inamorata" is scheduled to appear in January 2010 at the Wilderness House Literary Review. 

Ken Poyner (“Faith”) was published in the 70s, 80s and 90s in thirty different magazines, including West Branch, Poet Lore, Iowa Review, and New Mexico Humanities Review.  He works as an Information Systems Manager and is married to Karen Poyner, the current USAPL Raw Power lifting National Champion (48 kg class).  They have a wonderful time given their two apparently divergent pursuits, and he is looking forward to hopefully reinvigorating the literary career he simply let slide years ago.  His last chapbook (1995) was Sciences, Social from Palanquin Press, at the time an imprint of the University of South Carolina.

Rod Peckman (“Jettison”) has slowly come to the realization that writing a bio is more difficult than the most difficult of poems. He has published poetry in numerous online and print journals, including Barnwood, Juked, Babel Fruit, Hudson View, Thieves Jargon, Ghoti, Tonopah Review, The Agotist Online, and Clapboard House.  He lives in the Pacific Northwest and works for a large library system, proffering to patrons the closest approximation to the truth he can muster.

Eric Shorey (“A Fire, A Fire, A Fire”) is from Great Neck, Long Island.  He is currently attending Emerson College.  He is presently trying to claw his way to fame in the literary world or in Boston's underground electronic music scene

Andrew Jay Svedlow (“The Practice”) is Dean of the College of Performing and Visual Arts at the University of Northern Colorado and Professor of Art and Design.  Dr. Svedlow was previously the Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Winthrop University,  President of the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and Assistant Director of the Museum of the City of New York.

Jake Walters (“After the Funeral”) is currently teaching English in Transylvania as a Peace Corps volunteer.  He has recently finished a novel entitled "Shatra," the Romanian word for a traveling gypsy caravan.  

Randy Westgate is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist who has also worked on dozens of feature films. A resident of California, Westgate has been involved with some of the most influential films of the past decade, including Fight Club. Westgate has also been the makeup department head for several major Hollywood productions, ranging from Pathology to Warrior. He is currently working on the TV series The Middle.