Nico AlvaradoNico Alvarado (issue 1) is currently reading John Banville in the morning, Jordan Stempleman in the afternoon, and Jane Gardam at night.

Lily BrownLily Brown (issue 1) was born and raised in Massachusetts; she currently lives in Athens, Georgia, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing. Her first book, Rust or Go Missing, was recently published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and a new chapbook, Being One, is available from Brave Men Press.

MRB ChelkoMRB Chelko (issue 1) is a recent graduate of The University of New Hampshire's MFA program and Assistant Editor of the unbound journal, Tuesday; An Art Project. She has poems in current or forthcoming issues of AGNI Online; Bateau; Forklift, Ohio; The Laurel Review; Sixth Finch; and Washington Square among others. Chelko has two chapbooks: The World after Czeslaw Milosz (Dream Horse Press, 2011), which won the 2010 Dream Horse Press National Chapbook Prize, and What to Tell the Sleeping Babies (sunnyoutside, 2010). She lives in Central Harlem with her husband, Nick, and dog, Chuck.

Rawley GrauRawley Grau (issue 3),originally from Baltimore, Md., has been living in Ljubljana, Slovenia, since 2001. He holds a master’s degree in Slavic languages and literatures from the University of Toronto. His translations from Slovene include a book of essays by Aleš Debeljak (The Hidden Handshake: National Identity and Europe in the Post-Communist World, 2004), a collection of short stories by Boris Pintar (Family Parables, 2009), and a novel by Vlado Žabot (The Succubus, 2010). He is currently preparing a book of translations of the poetry of the nineteenth-century Russian poet Yevgeny Baratynsky, which is due out from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2013. Author photo (c) Joy Connelly.

Dina HardyDina Hardy (issue 1), recipient of a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she attended on a Maytag Fellowship. She was a finalist for the Poets & Writers’ New Voices in California Contest, named one of Los Angeles’s Newer Voices and published in Meridian’s Best New Poets anthology. Her work appears in numerous journals and anthologies, including Agni, Black Warrior Review, POOL and Southeast Review.

Matt HartMatt Hart (issue 2)'s most recent books of poems are Wolf Face (H_NGM_N BKS, 2010) and Light-Headed (BlazeVOX, 2011). His next book, Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless, will be published in 2012 by Typecast Publishing.  A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Kristin HatchKristin Hatch (issue 1) has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently lives in San Francisco. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Bat City Review; Black Warrior Review; Court Green; Fence; and Forklift, Ohio.

Brian HenryBrian Henry (issue 3) is the author of eight books of poetry—Astronaut (short-listed for the Forward Prize), American Incident, Graft, Quarantine, The Stripping Point, Wings Without Birds, Lessness, and Doppelgänger. His work has been translated into Croatian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, and Spanish. His translation of Tomaž Šalamun’s Woods and Chalices appeared from Harcourt in 2008, and his translation of Aleš Šteger’s The Book of Things appeared as a Lannan Foundation selection from BOA Editions in 2010 and won the 2011 Best Translated Book Award. Henry’s poetry and translations have received numerous honors, including an NEA fellowship, a Howard Foundation grant, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, the Cecil B. Hemley Memorial Award, the George Bogin Memorial Award, and a Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences grant.  Author photo (c) 2011 Susan Worsham.

Alec HershmanAlec Hershman (issue 2) lives in St. Louis where he teaches at the Stevens Institute of Business and Arts and at the Center for Humanities at Washington University. Other poems can be found in recent issues of DIAGRAM, The Sierra Nevada Review, Lake Effect, Washington Square, and Existere.

Thomas KaneRaised in Nashville, TN, Thomas Kane (issue 3) received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and is in the process of completing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Missouri. His poems have appeared in Cerise, McSweeney’s and Sou’Wester. He edited and co-translated Tomaž Šalamun’s There’s the Hand and There’s the Arid Chair (Counterpath, 2009).

Avram KlineAvram Kline (issue 2) attends the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at
UMass-Amherst. Since taking leave of New York City where he is a
public high school English teacher, he has baked tons of biscuits. He
also plays washbasin bass for the Cunninghams, a bluegrass quartet in
Northampton. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Jellyfish, The GC
Advocate, the Common, and Prick of the Spindle.

Miklavž KomeljMiklavž Komelj (issue 3), born in 1973, is a Slovene poet, essayist, and art historian, who lives in Ljubljana. He received a doctoral degree in art history from the University of Ljubljana in 2002 with the dissertation “The Meanings of Nature in Tuscan Painting in the First Half of the 14th Century.” He has published seven books of poetry, a collection of essays entitled The Necessity of Poetry (Nujnost poezije, 2010), and a study of the art of the Yugoslav partisans in World War II, How Should We Think about Partisan Art? (Kako misliti partizansko umetnost?, 2009). He has also published Slovene translations of works by Fernando Pessoa (2003, 2007), Pier Paolo Pasolini (2005, 2007), and César Vallejo (2011).

Chas. Kuo-SpeckChas. Kuo-Speck (issue 1) is a musician, writer, and painter living in Tucson with his wife.  He is a graduate from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.  His poems have appeared in The Colorado Review, Pool, and Thermos.

Gregory LawlessGregory Lawless (issue 2) is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a two time Pushcart nominee. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from such places as Artifice, Best of the Net 2007, Gulf Stream, The National Poetry Review, Sonora Review, Third Coast, and Zoland Poetry. BlazeVOX published his first collection of poems, I Thought I Was New Here, in 2009. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Phillis LevinPhillis Levin (issue 3) is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Mercury (2001) and May Day (2008), both from Penguin, and is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English (Penguin, 2001). Her honors include the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar Award to Slovenia, the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, the Richard Hugo Prize from Poetry Northwest, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Levin is a professor of English and the poet-in-residence at Hofstra University. She lives in Manhattan. Author photo (c) Sheila McKinnon.

Christopher MerrillChristopher Merrill (issue 3) has published four collections of poetry, including Brilliant Water, and Watch Fire, for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Aleš Debeljak’s Anxious Moments and The City and the Child; several edited volumes, among them, The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature and From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as Icon; and five books of nonfiction, The Grass of Another Country: A Journey Through the World of Soccer, The Old Bridge: The Third Balkan War and the Age of the Refugee, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, and The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, his journalism appears in many publications, and his awards include a knighthood in arts and letters from the French government. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and now directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. Author photo (c) Ram Devineni.

Nate PrittsNate Pritts (issue 2) has a new book of poems, Sweet Nothing, coming out in 2011 from Lowbrow Press. He is the founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N, an online journal & small press. Find him online at www.natepritts.com.

Peter RichardsPeter Richards (issue 3) is the author of Oubliette (Wave Books 2001), Nude Siren (Wave Books 2003), and Helsinki (Action Books 2011).

Matthew RohrerMatthew Rohrer (issue 3) is the author of 7 books of poems, most recently Destroyer and Preserver, published by Wave Books. One of his tattoos has been featured in two different books of literary tattoos. He lives in Brooklyn.


Amelia RosselliAmelia Rosselli (issue 2) (1930-1996) is one of the most influential voices in Italian twentieth century poetry. Her books of poetry include Variazioni Belliche (1964), Serie Ospedaliera (1969), and Documento (1976). Famous for her multilingualism, Rosselli wrote in Italian and English and occasionally in French. Her English poems have been collected as Sleep-Sonno (1992). English translations of Rosselli’s Italian writing include War Variations, (Green Integer, 2006, trans. Lucia Re and Paul Vangelisti) and The Dragonfly (Chelsea Editions, 2009, trans. Deborah Woodward and Giuseppe Leporace).

Henk RossouwHenk Rossouw (issue 2) graduated in 2011 from the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he currently works as a lecturer in college writing. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Boston Review, The Massachusetts Review, Tin House, The Threepenny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2009 he gave a reading in Times Square as one of the winners of the Poetry Society of America's Bright Lights Big Verse contest.

Tomaž ŠalamunTomaž Šalamun (issue 3) lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In the spring semester of 2011, he taught at The Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas. His recent books translated into English are Woods and Chalices (Harcourt 2008), Poker (Ugly Duckling Presse, second edition 2008), There's the Hand and There's the Arid Chair (Counterpath Press, 2009), and The Blue Tower (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).

Kaethe SchwehnKaethe Schwehn (issue 2) studied creative writing at the University of Montana and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  You can find her poems in places like Crazyhorse and jubilat and Minnesota Review.  If you want to read a story she wrote, you could look in an anthology called Fiction on a Stick (Milkweed, 2009).  If you want to read a bad unfinished novel she wrote, you could look in her bottom right desk drawer.  If you want to read an unfinished non-fiction book about a village and a war and the end of love, you could look inside her head.  You're quite the voyeur, aren't you?

Andy StallingsAndy Stallings (issue 1) lives in New Orleans with Melissa Dickey and their two children, Esme and Curran. He teaches creative writing at Tulane University, and is an avid baseball fan.

Michael Thomas TarenMichael Thomas Taren (issue 3) exists.

Diana ThowDiana Thow (issue 2) holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa. She has published her work in The Iowa Review, Mare Nostrum, 91st Meridian and Words Without Borders. She received a 2009-2010 Fulbright grant to Italy for her work on Amelia Rosselli.  She currently lives in Berkeley, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.

M.A. VizsolyiM.A. Vizsolyi (issue 1) grew up in Pennsylvania. His first book of poems, The Lamp with Wings, was selected by Ilya Kaminsky for the National Poetry Series, and is forthcoming in the fall 2011.  His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry International, 6x6, Slice Magazine, and BOMB.  He teaches ice hockey and ice skating lessons in Central Park, and lives in Brooklyn.

Joseph P. WoodJoseph P. Wood (issue 2) is the author of two full collections of poetry, Fold of the Map (Salmon Poetry) and I & We (CW Books), as well as five chapbooks. Recent poems or essays have appeared in Boston Review, diode, Hotel Amerika, RealPoetik, Verse, among others. He’s held residencies at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and at Artcroft, and teaches creative writing, English and American literature. His website is www.josephpatrickwood.com.

Greg WrennGreg Wrenn (issue 1)’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Yale Review, Pleiades, Boston Review, FIELD, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Off the Fire Road (Green Tower Press, 2009), won the 2008 Midwest Chapbook Series Contest and features a long poem about a man who travels to Brazil to be surgically transformed into a centaur. Currently he is a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University.