Christina Black finishes her English degree at Barnard College this December. In addition to existential wonderings (and wanderings), she enjoys bartending, cooking, and every other part of living well. Check out her food & drink blog here.

Janann Dawkins has written poetry for nearly twenty years. Her work has been featured most recently in Alba, mad swirl, MiPOesias, Mississippi Crow, Poesia and Third Wednesday; she also has work upcoming in freefall, Literary House Review, LiteraryMary, and The Tonopah Review. Her chapbook, Micropleasure, was published by Leadfoot Press in 2008. A graduate of Grinnell College with a B.A. in American Studies, she now resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Todd Dillard has his mother's Soma teeth and his father's lipless grin. He can chew wine glasses and spit out chandeliers, and never flosses. For more nibbles and gnashings, check out his work in Sub-Lit, Lumina, NANO Fiction, and Pebble Lake Review.

Rickey Laurentiis, a native of New Orleans, is a current undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several journals, such as Thieves Jargon and SWELL. He enjoys being Aquarius and reading on black queer studies. Find him here and here.

Emily Lopuch, by some fabulous stroke of something-or-other, is currently working towards an MFA in fiction at SLC. When Emily isn't writing or reading, she is drawing, and recently designed and illustrated Myra Goldberg's new online mystery, www.ourfirstwords.com. In seventy years Emily hopes to find herself living in Vermont: happy, shriveled like jerky, with cross-country skis strapped to her feet.

Denise Markonish is a curator at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) in North Adams, MA. Her current exhibition “BADLANDS – New Horizons in Landscape” ’ deals with changing perceptions of landscape, and includes such artists as Alexis Rockman, Robert Adams, Marine Hugonnier and Jennifer Steinkamp.

Reid Mitchell is a New Orleanian currently living in Wuxi, China. His poems have appeared in Cha, Pedestal, Asia Literary Review and elsewhere. He also collaborates with the Hong Kong poet Tammy Ho and their work has been published in Barrow Street and other places.

Cortney Philip recently received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but her cats still don't give her any respect. She aspires to make a living as a cribbage hustler and fairy tale writer. She has also appeared in Feathertale.

Nick Poniatowski earned a quarter of an M.F.A. and plans on maybe earning the other three quarters when his doctor boyfriend figures out where we want to move. Right now he lives in Detroit, MI with a pomeranian that poops on the floor whenever she smells bacon. You can see why he's anxious to move. He writes fiction and screenplays on an old-timey typewriter and he won't shell out the money for a correction ribbon.

Nanette Rayman Rivera, two-time Pushcart Nominee for non-fiction and poetry, is the author of the poetry collection, Project: Butterflies by Foothills Publishing and the chapbook, alegrias, by Lopside Press. She is the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for non-fiction and has poetry on Best of the Net 2007. Her story, Puhi Paka, was best of issue in Greensilk Journal. Publications include The Worcester Review, Carousel, Carve, The Berkeley Fiction Review, MiPOesias, ditch, Prick of the Spindle, The Wilderness Review, Dragonfire, Pebble Lake Review, Mannequin Envy, Dirty Napkin, Wheelhouse, The Smoking Poet, Pedestal, Cliterature, O Sweet Flowery Roses, and Lily. Upcoming: Featured Poet in Up the Staircase, Offcourse, Contemporary American Voices, The Blue Jew Yorker. She is listed on imbd and Turner Classic Movies for her roles in Guns on the Clackamas and Stephan’s Silver Bell. She is shopping her memoir around to agents, a true story of what really goes on in the New York City’s homeless, welfare, food stamp and public housing system. She graduated from The New School University.

Pawel Wojtasik is a video artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His current exhibition “Like a Shipwreck WE die Going Into Ourselves” can be seen at Martos Gallery in Chelsea. Wojtasik’s works have been shown at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; and others. In the spring of 2009 Wojtasik will present a panoramic video shot in New Orleans as part of the exhibition These Days: Elegies for Modern Times at MASS MoCA, in North Adams, MA.