E. Starling
E. Starling lives and works in the USA.

Nominated Poem Talking
This poem appeared in the 2006 print edition only.
For other works by E. Starling, please see Issue Nine, Winter 2005 of the Arsenic Lobster.

Michael Paul Ladanyi
Michael has seen his poetry, interviews and book reviews published worldwide. Two publishers even nominated him for the Pushcart Prize in 2004. Suckers. He thinks he has seen 7 or 8 of his chaps and a full poetry collection published. His friends keep telling him to Google himself to find out. He really doesn't give a shit. He writes in a self-taught, self-dubbed style he thinks of as Natural Bohemian Dadaism. It's the Hungarian in him. He has served as a poetry editor for various magazines too many times to make it fun anymore, and has published a mag or two of his own, one of which is still online, Adagio Verse Quarterly http://www.geocities.com/adagioversequarterly/.

He writes full-time, feels pain every day from a debilitating back injury he suffered five years ago, drinks too much, takes morphine and methadone for pain, and loathes doctors and the government. He reads and listens to everyone that is worth a shit, and makes a hellavu lot of fun of those that are not. Really. He is married to a beautiful woman, truly, and is the father of two amazing daughters. Hell, makes it all worth it.

Nominated Poem Open a Copper Pouring

Nanette Rayman-Rivera
Nanette was born in Boston and now lives in New York. She's an actress as well as a writer and has performed in off-off Broadway plays, independent films and was a waitress four times on All My Children. She really wanted to be a violinist, but never could afford lessons or the violin. She is published in numerous literary journals including The Berkeley Fiction Review, The Worcester Review and The Pittsburgh Quarterly, MiPOesias, Carousel, Wicked Alice, The Pebble Lake Review, andwerve, Sein Und Werden, and Barnwood. An excerpt from her memoir was published in Dragonfire in April and May. Her first poetry collection, Stay the Lunatic Course, will soon be published by Foothills Publishing.

Nominated Poem I Know

Maj Ragain
Maj was born on a Saturday morning, September 15, 1940, in Olney, a small farming community in southeastern Illinois. Father, a carpenter; mother, a homemaker. The poem, a thing made of language on hand, in and by hand. Wood, food, cloth, paper, that long tradition. Raised on Vernor lake, north of Onley, marriage of heaven and water, fishing the skylights. Education, the paved road out of town. Phd, Kent State University, 1990. Poetry, that dirt road winding back home, corn tassel, fencerows, the last light fading in the top branches of a century oak. Poetry, that slip knot, bridging solitude and community, a way to offer one's longing to the world. Maj has taught at Kent State University in Ohio, off and on since 1969. A wife: LuAnn Csernotta. Two children: Sean Kelly and Megan Ryan. A Hungry Ghost Surrenders His Tackle Box is Maj's fifth collection of poems. He travels widely in Kent and ties his small boat to the back porch railing, 322 East Grant Street.

Nominated Poem The Trail of Garlic Tears Leads Right to My Door

Sampson Starkweather
Sampson lives in Chappaqua, NY and works as an editor for a science textbook publishing company. He has a little machine in the back of his throat that allows him to say anything. His poems are recently published or forthcoming in: Gargoyle, Asheville Poetry Review, Redivider, Lumina, Roanoke Review, and Main Street Rag.

Nominated Poem Accidental Music

L. Kelly
L. Kelly lives (or something like it) in Baltimore where she works an uneventful job and spends uneventful weekends and uneventful holidays imagining she's a pretentious snob who writes.

Nominated Poem -un