Tess. Lotta is a Los Angeles native. Currently, she is finishing her MA in English (literature and literary criticism) while tutoring English and teaching creative writing. She curates the annual Literati Cocktail reading series at the West Hollywood Book Fair and, until recently, she served as poetry editor for poeticdiversity.org. Her journalism, poetry, and photography have appeared in such publications as Knock, poeticdiversity, The Raven Chronicles, Clamor, Bust, Rockrgrl,Blood Orange Review (forthcoming) and The Stranger. Information on her creative projects can be found at www.litparlor.com or myspace.com/tess_lotta.

Duane Locke, Ph. D. (Metaphysical Poetry) lives in rural Lakeland, Florida and has had (as of May 07) 5,877 poems published in print and e zines. 17 print and e books published. Also, a painter, exhibited widely—a discussion of his work appears in Gary Monroe’s Extraordinary Interpretations (U of Fla press).  Recent exhibition: “Outsider Art” at Polk Museum. As a photographer, he has had 289 photos published on internet and does close-ups of tossed away trash, Mystic vegetation, visual music and nature (primarily small insects). For more information, interviews, awards, etc. click on Google for quasi half-million entries. Is listed in Who’s Who in America (Marquis.)

Robert Krut's work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Blackbird,Barrow Street, and Salt Hill, among others.  The two poems here are part of the chapbook Theory of the Walking Big Bang (H-ngm-n Books, 2007).  In the coming months, he will be a part of the Rhapsodomancy Reading Series in Los Angeles. 

Amanda Laughtland: I live in the suburbs of Seattle, where I teach English part-time at Edmonds Community College. My chapbook, I Meant to Say, is available from overhere Press. My poems appear in recent issues of Gertrude, Mirage #4/Period[ical], past simple, and Sawbuck. I publish a very small zine and mini-chapbooks under the imprint, "Teeny Tiny" (http://www.teenytiny.org).

     Sarah Maclay is the author of The White Bride (forthcoming, University of Tampa Press, ’08) and Whore (Tampa Review Prize for Poetry), as well as three limited edition chapbooks: Shadow of Light (Inevitable Press), Ice from the Belly (Far Star Fire) and Weeding the Duchess (Black Stone Press). Her poems, essays and reviews have appeared in American Poetry Review,FIELD, Ploughshares, The Writers’ Chronicle, Ninth Letter, Pool, Swink, The Laurel Review, The Journal, lyric, Hotel Amerika, ZYZZYVA, Solo, The Los Angeles Review, Washington Square and numerous other spots including Poetry International, where she now serves as book review editor. Poems are forthcoming in Luna, Gulf Coast and Hunger Mountain. Her work has recently been selected for inclusion in The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 to the Present (Scribner’s, 2008). She received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XXXI, a 2005 Albert and Elaine Borchard Fellowship, and was the first runner up in the 2007 Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange Contest. She has also been a winner of the dA Center for the Arts Poetry Prize, a finalist for the Blue Lynx Prize and a semi-finalist for the Kenyon Review Poetry Prize, the Cleveland State University Poetry Prize and the Tupelo Press First Book Prize. She was one of eight poets selected to read in San Jose’s inaugural California Poets Festival in 2006. A native of Montana, a graduate of Oberlin College and the Vermont College MFA program, she has taught at USC and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, and hosted both the Venice Library reading series and the Beyond Baroque First Sundays series. Currently, she’s a visiting assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University. She also conducts workshops privately and, periodically, at Beyond Baroque.