Cristien Storm is an artist, activist, writer and therapist with a long history of integrating arts and cultural organizing into activism and human rights work.  She a founder and former Executive Director of Home Alive, an arts based anti-violence organization in Seattle Washington.  Cristien was also a researcher and cultural organizer for The Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity (NWCHD), a six state human rights organization supporting community response to hate crimes, bigotry and assaults by organized white nationalist groups in rural and suburban communities.  Cristien has been a featured speaker and on numerous panels and conferences, including a three-week European human rights speakers tour on gender and sexism in progressive social movements entitled “Culture War” for anti-fascist organizers.  In addition, Cristien has published works on cultural organizing and movement building.  Currently Cristien works as a therapist and consultant.

Lisa Zaran is an American poet, essayist, public speaker and author of six collections including The Blondes Lay Content and the sometimes girl, the latter of which was recently the focus of a year long translation course in Germany. Selections from The Blondes Lay Content have been translated to Bangla, Hindi and Punjabi. She is the founder and editor of Contemporary American Voices and Little Lark Press, a poetry journal for teens. Lisa lives and works in Arizona.

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers started writing poetry and taking photographs over 30 years ago while living in South Africa.  He is also a former Chicago stage poet, founder of The Chicago Poetry Agenda and a former active board member of The Tulsa Arts and Humanities Literary Arts Council. A former member of The Greater Dallas Community of Writers, he has conducted and participated in numerous poetry workshops and feature readings in the U.S.A.  He currently lives in Colorado.His poetry and photographs have been published in numerous online and print magazines, including The Poetry Victims, Unlikely 2.0, The Argonaut’s Boat, Blinkzine Arts Magazine, Colorado Poets Center, Kritya, Downtown L.A. Life Magazine, and Interpoetry.  He also publishes memoirs and poetry about South Africa in Sketchbook. Jeffrey’s work has been widely anthologized, including American Poetry Anthology (1982),Chicago Saloon Poets (1992) , Step Into The Light (1992), and Voices Israel Anthology (2005 & 2007). Between publishing 2 books of poetry, Fear of Heights and The Cherry Poems, Jeffrey serves as editor and publisher for The Poetry Victims, americana photographic, Liar Liar Pants on Fire and the Frank Talk Blog.  He is a featured blogger on AMP (Artists Meeting Place), and also maintains a variety of other blogs and online sites.

Erin Suyehara holds an MA in English Literature and is working on her doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania .  Her interests in literature include Eighteenth-Century British  Literature, feminist literary criticism, the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan and Freud, and post-colonial criticism. She also teaches third grade at Taper Technology Magnet School in San Pedro.