Rachel Adams
Rachel is a native of Baltimore, Maryland; a longtime resident of Washington, DC; and the editor of an academic journal centered on post-Soviet democratization and of Lines + Stars, a quarterly literary journal. A graduate of the Catholic University of America and the Johns Hopkins University, her poetry has been published in Blue Unicorn, Ophelia Street, PennUnion Review, Town Creek Poetry, and others. She aspires to re-learn how to use the SLR 35mm camera she bought in college, read more nonfiction, construct and tend to a rooftop garden, and own more pairs of colorful legwear.
Renee Beauregard
Renee lives in the middle of nowhere, and drinks way too much coffee. She's published her poetry in The Fiddlestix Review and in The Northern New England Review, and is startlingly good at Balderdash and Taboo.
Tanya Collings
After years of skepticism regarding past life regression therapy, Tanya recently discovered that she was once a flying, human flesh consuming male demon. Currently, she is regarded by her friends as the barefoot cycling, cactus growing, patchouli scented Savior of Spiders. Her poetry is a needed attempt to find balance between the two.
Matt Gillespie
Matt recently moved from California to Brooklyn, New York and works there as a 7th grade science teacher He is fully relishing in the opportunity to remember what it feels like to be 10 years old again. When not teaching, he typically divides his free time between running, writing, thinking, exploring, remembering, wondering, and sleeping. He is originally from Palatine, Illinois which generally explains everything.
R. Jennings
Representing Canada's Capital in this year's pageant is R. Jennings, wearing half of a three piece suit, half of a cocktail dress and heavy make-up on one eye
Melissa Koosmann
Melissa lives in Cape Town, South Africa. She spends her time writing, reading, practicing the martial art aikido, camping in the territory of conniving little monkeys who frequently hoodwink her into turning her back on her sandwich, and helping little kids learn how to read. Her chapbook, Endings, was published by Flying Guillotine Press in 2008.
John Olson
John notices things. A white feather at the bottom of the steps. A plot of black, freshly upturned dirt next to a row of bright red tulips. Sometimes, what sounds like the panting of a huge dog turns out to be a prose poem he hasn’t written yet. Prose poems he has written have appeared recently in The American Poetry Review, New American Writing, Hawai’i Pacific Review and An Introduction to the Prose Poem. Backscatter: New and Selected Poems, appeared in 2008, as well as his novel Souls of Wind about the exploits of Arthur Rimbaud in the American West where he meets Billy the Kid. Olson began writing when he noticed that the ink he expelled confused his enemies and provided everything essential for the spread of the personal pronoun.
Jacob Rakovan
Jacob lives in Rochester, NY with five children, one of whom is invisible, and a hound dog to hunt him. His wife is beautiful, and smarter than him.
Chris Ridenour
Chris has had two stalkers and his father-in-law once pulled out most of a bad tooth with a pair of pliers. Despite these and other horrors of existence, he still writes sometimes.
Kenyatta Rogers
Originally from Cleveland, OH, Kenyatta is a MFA Graduate of Columbia College Chicago. He teaches for Words@Play, an afterschool poetry program, and with the City Colleges of Chicago.
Erik D. Steel
Erik is a trilingual freelance writer and long-haired Russianist based in Ann Arbor, MI. He is currently researching
postmodern poetics in Polish post-punk. Yes, really.
John Thomas
John is a poet and novelist when he can be. If you get inspired, you can read his work in recent back issues of
Confrontation, Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, Hunger Mountain, Indiana Review, and several other publications. He used to play jazz and other forms of often agreeable noise, but life is
expensive and he is a kinder person when he can afford to eat. John is now back in his hometown of Seattle, where he is studying electrical engineering so that he can help nudge North America toward sustainable energy. When time and money are more abundant, he promises he'll play music again.
Sara Tracey
Sara pretends to be the urban, academic type, but she is actually a small town girl who loves romance novels and country music. You can find her in Chicago, glaring at people who stand too close to her on the subway. Her chapbook, Flood Year, is available from dancing girl press.
Bill Yarrow
Bill has no favorite poet, just favorite poems. To wit: “To Elsie,” “Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude,” “Delight in Disorder,” “The Akond of Swat.” He studied with Jean Valentine and Brendan Kennelly. He has seen Lawrence Ferlinghetti, W. H. Auden, Mark Strand, Jorge Luis Borges, Yehuda Amichai, Richard Howard, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, and Sidney Goldfarb perform. He has poems forthcoming in new aesthetic, Pank, DIAGRAM, and Poetry International. He lives in Illinois. He is not a fan of squirrels.
Mark Adams
It's been said "find something that you love to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life." That notion has worked for Mark for nearly forty years. From his early flirtation with cubist abstractions past his heavily Dutch influenced figurative work of the early 70's into the theatrical world of dancers and mimes and onto the recontexturalized appropriated fashion series of the late 80's and all the while including commissioned portraits -- in the words of Jerry Garcia: " What a long, strange trip it's been!" For more information visit: http://www.markadamsstudio.com.