Lara Gularte is a student in the M.F.A. creative writing program at San Jose State University, where she has served as poetry and art editor for Reed Magazine. She received the 2005 Anne Lillis Award for Creative Writing and Phelan Awards for several of her poems. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including the Santa Clara Review, The Montserrat Review and the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. Her chapbook Days Between Dancing was published by Poet’s Corner Press in 2002. Gularte’s poems have been translated into Portuguese by the University of the Acores and featured in the literary supplement SAAL-Suplemento Acoriano de Artes e Letras, da revista Saber/Acores.

Elaine Bartlett’s poetry and stories have appeared in The Antietam Review, The Comstock Review, Calyx, Fourteen Hills, Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley and San Jose’s Downtown Magazine, among others. She was awarded the 2003 Yemassee prize in fiction and will be a Poe-Faulkner Fellow this fall in the University of Virginia creative writing program. Her fiction is forthcoming in The South Carolina Review.

Designer

Luis Ledezma is a graduate of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he earned a B.S. in electrical engineering. He is currently the webmaster of Convergence, The Little Village Counseling Center (www.thelittlevillagecc.com), and the town of Tuxca (www.tuxca.com). Ledezma resides in San Jose.

Email: lledezma@alumni.calpoly.edu

Contributors

Javier Chalini

Javier Chalini was born in Puebla, Pue. Mexico. He graduated from the University of the Americas with a B.A. in graphic arts and design in 1986 and shortly after moved to Mexico City to work in design and to pursue a specialization in printmaking, with a focus on metal etch printing, at the San Carlos Academy of Art. In the early 1990s he lived in Barcelona, Spain, where he was influenced by Catalonian artists such as Picasso, Tapies and Miro. Since 1992 he has lived in San Francisco, Calif. His work has been shown in exhibits throughout California, including the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and City Art Gallery and Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

Email: jchalini@earthlink.net
Website: http://home.earthlink.net/~jchalini/

Bill Cowee

Bill Cowee received an artist’s fellowship in literature from the Nevada Arts Council in 1998 and was a Governor’s Arts Award recipient in 2001. Cowee is editor of the Ash Canyon Review, as well as a freelance writer, columnist and a founding member of the Ash Canyon Poets group.

Marianne LaValle-Vincent

Marianne LaValle-Vincent’s work has appeared in Italiana Americana, The Birmingham Review, Poetry Motel, Falling Star, 3 Cup Morning and other publications. Her first poetry collection was American Lie, and she has also authored Coverings, a chapbook. Her second full-length poetry collection, 313’s Child, will be available this summer.

Besides poetry, many of her short stories have been published—most recently “Understanding Dad” in Chicken Soup for the Soul—Fathers and Daughters Edition. She has been awarded a grant through Hill House Writers in Nashville, Tenn., and is invited frequently to lecture at universities and libraries in Syracuse, where she lives with her husband, Tim, and daughter, Jess. She also acts as an assistant editor for The Rose & Thorn e-zine as well as assistant copy editor and feature writer for Moondance, an online literary magazine supporting creative women. A first-generation Italian-American, Marianne is an administrative R.N. who focuses on marketing for a large medical imaging corporation.

Ashok Niyogi

Ashok Niyogi was born in Calcutta in 1955 and graduated with honors in economics from Presidency College. He spent 30 years in the world of international commerce. His work has taken him all over the world and he now divides his time between Russia, California—where his two daughters live—and India, where he has a timber plantation. Niyogi’s books of poetry include Crossroads, Reflections in the Dark and Tentatively. He has been published extensively in the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada in magazines and anthologies and has authored several chapbooks.

Email: ashokniyogi@yahoo.com

Mary Lou Taylor

Mary Lou Taylor’s poetry collection The Fringes of Hollywood was published in December 2002 by Jacaranda Press in San Jose, Calif. Her poems have appeared in The Montserrat Review, Bellowing Ark, Tundra, Chiyo’s Corner, caesura and Reed Magazine. She also serves on the boards of the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University and the Library Leadership Advisory Council of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose. She lives in Saratoga, Calif.

Email: MLTpoet@aol.com

Valerie Martt Wallace

Valerie Martt Wallace is administrative director of the Urban Life Center in Chicago. She received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute and is the recipient of an Ox-Bow writing residency. Her work has appeared in Maize, Borderlands, Mid-American Poetry Review and Rhino.

Email: valeriewallace@juno.com

Patricia Wellingham-Jones

A former psychology researcher, writer, editor and lecturer, Patricia Wellingham-Jones of Tehama, Calif., has recently been published in Edgz, Ibbetson Street Press and HazMat Review. She won the 2003 Reuben Rose International Poetry Prize (Israel) and is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

Email: pwj@wellinghamjones.com
Website: http://www.wellinghamjones.com

Ernie Wormwood

Ernie Wormwood is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She received a poetry scholarship from the Southampton Writer’s Conference in 2003. Recent readings include the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon Series and the Joaquin Miller Cabin Reading in Washington, D.C. Her poems have appeared in Connections, YAWP, The Squaw Valley Review, The Antietam Review, Underwire, Beltway Quarterly and the anthology Poetic Voices Without Borders. New work will appear in The Cafe Review and Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami from Runa and Co. (2005). She is co-founder of the open mic reading at Fenwick Street Used Books and Music in Leonardtown, Md., where she lives.

Email: erniewormwood@gmpexpress.net