Norman Ball - "Dots of Pretension" : Norman Ball is a Virginia-based writer and musician whose work appears frequently in venues both on- and off-line.

Mark Cantora - "Hostages to Fortune" : Mark Cantora graduated from Muhlenberg College with a degree in History. Mark spent time working and studying in the Middle East before returning back to the States last year.

David Chorlton - "Dream Country" : David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in England, and spent several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. He has become increasingly fascinated by the drama of the Arizona landscape, and continues to explore it when he can, along with his wife Roberta, with a birding field guide close at hand.

Henry Cordova - "Hallucination #2" and "Despedida" : Henry was born in Tampa, Florida in 1947, served as a navigator in the US Navy during the Vietnam era, was educated as a mathematician and an astronomer, and currently works as a civil servant for a municipal government in Florida. His hobbies are astronomy, sailing, and writing non-fiction for magazines. His poetry has twice appeared in our pages; most recently in "Birds and Bees" (IV.1, Feb '07).

Jason Duke - "Juice" : Jason Duke earned a BA in public relations from Arizona State University in August 2005, and entered the Army the same month. Now he serves as a paralegal specialist for the Army's JAG Corp, and was recently promoted to sergeant. His stories have appeared in such magazines as Plots With Guns, 3AM Magazine, Outsider Ink, The Murder Hole, Muse Apprentice Guild, A Cruel World, and Shred of Evidence. His screenplays have earned a special mention in the 2002 American Gem Short Script Contest, and placed as a finalist in the 2003 Anything But Hollywood Contest. Jason is currently deployed with his unit in Iraq.

Richard Fein - "Paranoid Hairdo" and "Editing My Ex-Lover's Digital Face in Photoshop" : Richard Fein was a finalist in The 2004 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition. He has been published in many web and print journals, such as Oregon East Southern Humanities Review, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Parnassus Literary Review, Small Pond, Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Exquisite Corpse, and many others. He also has an interest in digital photography. Samples of his photography can be found here

Howie Good - "Scarecrow" and "The Uncertainty Principle" : Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007), both from FootHills Publishing, and Strangers & Angels (2007) from Scintillating Publications. He was recently nominated for the second time for a Pushcart Prize.

Carol Grellas - "Thoughts from a Playground" : Carol Lynn Grellas is a Northern California-based writer. She attended Santa Clara University as an English and Art major. Her first chapbook, Litany of Finger Prayers, will be released in 2008 from Pudding House Press. Her first book, a collection of poetry I'm Packing Things for Heaven, was published in 2007. She has had dozens of poems appear in magazines and online journals; most recently, The Oasis Ezine and The Oasis Online, Las Cruces for Poets and Writers, Munyori Poetry Journal, Words on Paper, The Pregnant Moon Review, Moondance, Dogzplot ,Twilight Musings Anthology, The Verse Marauder and A Tender Touch. She has poems forthcoming in MSU Great Falls Literary Guild: Writings from the River, The Storyteller Magazine, Sonnet-writers and Chanterelle's Notebook. She lives with her husband, five children, and a blind dog named Ginger, who inspire much of her poetry.

John Grey - "The Leaving of Luanne" : John is an Australian-born poet, playwright, musician. His latest book is What Else Is There from Main Street Rag, and he has recently appeared in Cape Rock, Weber Studies, Writers Bloc and the Connecticut Review.

Cindy Kelly - "A Record of Things" : Cindy Kelly lives in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains with her Himalayan cat, Ursala Miner. Her short fiction and poetry has recently appeared in Steel City Review and New Myths. She is the editor of Plain Spoke, the quarterly literary publication of Amsterdam Press.

Charles LaFave - "Buried" : Charles has previously been published in Dark Reveries.

Richard Lighthouse - "grocery aisle" and "house signs" : Richard Lighthouse is a contemporary writer and poet. He holds an M.S. from Stanford University. His work has been published in: The Penwood Review, West Hills Review, Mudfish, and many others worldwide.

Bryan Murphy - "Meltdown" : Bryan is a translator who lives in Turin, Italy. His fiction has appeared twice in our pages, as has his poetry (most recently in IV. 2, "Collateral Indigeny"). His story in this issue bings to a close what we've been calling "the Daria cycle": a character and world we are proud to have debuted precisely two years ago in "Future Imperfect" (III.2).

Burgess Needle - "Pixel Lives" : Burgess is a retired school librarian in Tucson. He has also been a Peace Corps volunteer (Thailand, 1967-1969), a co-director of the Southern Arizona Writing Project, a co-editor of Prickly Pear/Tucson (a poetry quarterly), and has had a few poems published in small press publications. He's currently working on a collection of poems that draw on his experiences in Thailand. You might also enjoy a comment he wrote to NPR's "Talk of the Nation" last June (scrolling required).

Simon Perchik - " * (You become expert, the stream)" : Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Rafts (Parsifal Editions) is his most recent collection. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website.

Oliver Rice - "Neither in an Ether nor the Air" and "Or the Gaze of a Saint" : Oliver Rice has received the Theodore Roethke Prize, twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies in the United States, as well as in Canada, England, Austria, Turkey, and India. His book, On Consenting to Be a Man, has been published by Cyberwit, a diversified publishing house in the cultural capital Allahabad, India, and will be available shortly on Amazon.

Lori Romero - "The Hundredth Sheep" : Lori Romero’s short screenplay Strange Saints won the Manhattan Short Film Festival’s Screenplay Competition. Her chapbook, Wall to Wall, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories have been published in more than eighty journals and anthologies, and she was recently nominated for a second Pushcart Prize. Lori's last appearance in our pages was in "Esculent Flummery" (II. 3; August '05).

David W. Rushing - "February 13" : David has had poems published in over 100 magazines; recently, Open Minds Quarterly, Foliate Oak, and San Gabriel Valley Quarterly. He has had two chapbooks published, Appearances and Unrequited Love, Unfinished Lives. His first book of non-fiction prose will be out in the summer of 2008. David has appeared with us before, as well; most recently in our previous issue, "Naughty Bits".

Candy Tothill - "View From a Window Not Mine" : Candy's work has appeared in the 2River View, Get Underground, Litnet Magazine, Megaera Anthology, The Pedestal Magazine, Unlikely Stories and Wide Thinker, as well as in our "Collateral Indigeny" issue. She lives in Blairgowrie, South Africa, where she has established Cat, Inc., a consultancy focused on corporate social responsibility.

Donna Vorreyer - "A Dieter Dreams" : Donna writes and teaches in the Chicago suburbs, and has appeared in many print and online journals, most recently in DMQ Review, Boxcar Poetry Review and New York Quarterly.