contributor sketches

Jennifer Anne Beebe lives in Seattle, Washington. She attends the University of Washington where she is pursuing a degree in English and creative writing. Jennifer is inspired by and learns from an eclectic mix of poets, as well as her six-year-old son. Her work has appeared in the Seattle Review, Spindrift, and Thunder Sandwich with more work pending in Snow Monkey and Cranky.

Megan Burns is currently working on an MFA at the University of New Orleans. She lives in the French Quarter with her husband, poet Dave Brinks, and their ten month old daughter Mina. Journals and letters from other female writers such as Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Frida Kahlo inform her work. Megan has been published most recently in The New Laurel Review, Holy Tomato, and brown box.

Fred Cabral: "I am inspired by an eclectic group of individuals: T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, e. e. cummings, D. H. Lawrence, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Angela Carter, and Tori Amos. Writing that is unique, bizarre, and full of flavor stocks my bookshelves. Aside from reading and writing, I enjoy spending time with my wife Lisa and our four cats. I also enjoy website design, online auctions, traveling, making pizzas, and vacuuming."

Avik Chanda is a management consultant by profession but also a freelance writer and painter. Recent publications include Ascent, Kimera, Comrades, Eclectica, and Slant.

R. Paul Craig teaches philosophy at San Jacinto College near Houston. His poetry has previously been published in such journals as Poet Lore, Peloris, Angel Hair, 2River View, and Red River Review. 

Peg Duthie works as a calligrapher in Nashville, Tennessee. Her writing has appeared in Astropoetica, the 2004 Texas Poetry Calendar, and other publications as well as Measured Extravagance, her online journal.

Charles Kang: "I am a thirty-three-year old Korean-American, a husband, and a father. Like many others, I have a job in the world, and I (try to) write when I get a chance. I studied English in Los Angeles where I was reared. I love to read poems and novels—am working on books by Nobel Laureates—and I enjoy photography. I love longboard surfing but am an illiterate musician. I live and work in the San Francisco Bay area. I am Christian."

Martin Kaszubowski writes in a variety of forms on many topics. His poems have appeared in The Electric Acorn, The Susquehanna Quarterly, and The Powhatan Review. Marty lives with his wife and daughter in Norfolk, Virginia, surrounded by more computers, books, and cats than most normal people.

Sheila Paris Klein: "I am a diligent short story and novella writer who has only recently taken up poetry, primarily because it seemed markedly unfair to foist 6,000 word documents off onto the members of my writer's group when they were submitting short poems (even though they said they didn't mind, no really, not one iota). I would name as the most pervasive influences on my writing the sensibilities of Jane Austen, Richard Russo, Vladimir Nabakov, the director, Robert Altman, and Rene Magritte."

Lennart Lundh is (in no order of importance) a military historian, fiction writer, poet, husband, father, grandfather, computer programmer, Viet Nam vet and conscientious objector. At age fifty-five, a list of his influences would drag on like an Academy Award acceptance speech. He hopes for enough future lives to satisfy his interests.

Carter Monroe lives, works, and writes in the Provinces. His novel Journey was published in January 2001. He is coauthor (with Robert Canipe and Tim Peeler) of Writers on the Storm, a book of short stories, essays, and observations on the contemporary South. Monroe  is the author of three chapbooks: Sittin' in with the Sun, Rank Stranger Press, 2001, Parallel Enigmas with Eric C. Harrison, Third Lung Press, 2003, and Waffle House Blues, Fingerprint Press, scheduled for release in 2004. The manuscript of Monroe's latest chap, Billy Putrid Works His Way through School and Other Poems, is slated for publication this summer by Thunder Sandwich Publishing. His poetry has appeared in Thunder Sandwich, Poems Niederngasse, The Underbeat Journal, Third Lung Review, Peshekee River Poetry, and James River Poetry Review. You are welcome to visit Monroe's homepage.

Gordon Moyer is a painter, writer, and historian of science living in Tucson, Arizona. His poetry has been published in Blue Unicorn, The Baltimore Review, Potomac Review, Babel, Xanadu, and many other literary journals. Some of Moyer's scientific and mathematical articles have appeared in Sky and Telescope, Scientific American, and Quantum. Currently, Moyer is teaching himself tensor analysis and composing a book of aphorisms.

Parker C. Sams is a retired newspaper editor living in Findlay, Ohio, and a 1960 graduate of the University of Kentucky. His poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner and The Great Lakes Review.

Kermit L. Van Brocklin was born in northern New York, and after following a military career, now lives and works in Ames, Iowa. Although new to the world of serious poetry, he has been writing since high school yet still finds surprises in everything he writes. 

Robert Weir is a child and family counselor living on Vancouver Island, Canada. He writes poems and some songs as well.

Lori Williams is a born and bred New Yorker who works as a legal assistant in the publishing field. She is the single mother of a teenage boy who has given her much fodder for poetry in the last three years. Now that he's headed for the Navy, Lori is prepared to write some politically oriented poetry. And empty nest stuff, too. Her work has been published in numerous print and online publications, most recently and forthcoming in Poems Niederngasse, Snow Monkey, New Zoo Poetry Review, Avatar Review, and Urban Spaghetti.

Katharina Yakovina: "I believe artists are responsible for the emotions which they bring into the world. Movies, paintings, stories, poems, and photographs have influence on the minds of people, so art may act as a stimulus to an event. It is important for every artist to care about spiritual space because it is the invisible home of a person's thoughts, wishes, and hopes." 

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