KB Eckhardt wonders if readers really want authors to be stripped of mystery in these sketches. To comply, Eckhardt reveals that he/she is in possession of at least one graduate degree, more than a single publication credit and evidence attesting to the existence of said being. Exposed.

Sybil Pittman Estess is the author of Seeing The Desert Green, co-editor of Elizabeth Bishop And Her Art, and co-author of In A Field Of Words (with Janet McCann, Prentice-Hall, 2002).  She has published poems in many journals, including Manhattan Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Mid-Western Humanities Review, Shenandoah, Borderlands, The New Republic, New Texas, and Windhover.  She helped to found Houston Poetry Fest and has taught in several colleges and at Inprint. A native of Mississippi, she received her Ph.D. from Syracuse University and has lived in Houston for 28 years.

B. H. Fairchild has been recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and NEA Fellowships. His third book of poems, The Art of the Lathe, was a Finalist for the National Book Award and received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the William Carlos Williams Award. Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest, his fourth book, received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress.

Carolyn Tourney Florek is a poet, visual artist, and publisher who lives in Houston, Texas with her family. She is the co-founder of Mutabilis Press, a non-profit literary press, and editor of TimeSlice: Houston Poetry 2005. Her poetry has been published in Illya’s Honey, Green Hills Literary Lantern, the Houston Poetry Fest anthology, and other publications.

Larry L. Fontenot makes his home in Sugar Land, Texas. He has had poetry published in Arrowsmith, Boxcar Poetry Review, Curbside Review, i.e. magazine, Pebble Lake Review, Red River Review, Shit Creek Review and Sulphur River Literary Review. Larry was a featured poet at the 2000 Houston Poetry Fest. A chapbook, Choices & Consequences, was the winner of the Maverick Press 1996 Southwest Poets’ Series Chapbook competition.

Priscilla Frake’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary publications in the U.S., including Nimrod, Atlanta Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Sun and journals in Great Britain and Ireland including: The New Welsh Review, Cutting Teeth, Orbis, Cyphers, and Deliberately Thirsty. Her chapbook, Argument Against Winter, was published by Cloud in the U.K. A former geologist, she now makes jewelry and poems in the Houston area.

Adamarie Fuller is a native Houstonian, graduate of Milby High School and Stephen F. Austin University. Fuller is a CPA employed as the Assistant Treasurer and Accounting Manager of Mitsui Tubular Products. She has two children, both in Austin; daughter Rebecca, a realtor, and son Stephen, a starving artist/musician, are very happy in their chosen endeavors.

Edwin Gallaher’s poems have appeared in The Paris Review and are anthologized in Retellings: a Thematic Literature Anthology.

Jeannie Gambill lives in Bellaire, Texas. Her poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, and she has been a finalist in the Ruth G. Hardman/ Nimrod Poetry Competition.

Lewis Garvin has taught at the College of William and Mary, the University of New Orleans, Metairie Park Country Day, and in Fort Bend. He has published in Spiky Palm and New Orleans Review.

Denton resident Wayne Lee Gay holds degrees in music history and musicology, and is currently enrolled in the graduate program in creative writing at the University of North Texas. In a previous career as a journalist, he was finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

John Gorman lives in Galveston and teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. His work, gathered in three chapbooks, has appeared in TimeSlice and many other publications in Texas, nationally, and in Canada.

Jennifer Grotz was born in Canyon, Texas. Now she lives in North Carolina, where she teaches at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program.

Laurie A. Guerrero’s poetry has appeared in Voices Along the River, Literary Mama, The Texas Poetry Calendar 2007 and is forthcoming in The Palo Alto Review and The Texas Poetry Calendar 2008. Two-time winner of the Rosemary Thomas Poetry Prize, her chapbook manuscript was a finalist in a competition sponsored by Kulupi Press. Though born and raised in San Antonio, she is currently an Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and three children.

William F. Guest , a resident of Houston, Texas, recently retired as Chairman of a life insurance holding company. Previously, he practiced law in Houston for about 25 years. Poetry has been a life long interest. A few poems have been published in poetry journals, but no submissions have been made in recent years. One poem was selected for the Houston Poetry Fest a few years ago. Mr. Guest has attended several Inprint Poetry Workshops.

Laura Quinn Guidry’s poetry has been published in The Texas Review, Concho River Review, Louisiana Literature, Earth’s Daughters, Texas Poetry Calendars 2003 and 2007 and in the recent anthology In the Eye. She lives in Houston and Carmine, Texas.

A native Texan, Michelle Hartman is a book reviewer for the University of North Texas Press and recently finished a Political Science-Pre Law Bachelors degree at TWU. Her poems have appeared in Sojourn, Illya’s Honey, Red River Review, The Texas Review, and descant, and received Honorable Mention in the Dallas Poets Community 2006 national poetry contest. Her fictional account of Fort Worth history, They Were Dead When I Met Them, is currently crawling over various transoms in New York.

Kurt Heinzelman co-founded and for ten years edited the award-winning journal, The Poetry Miscellany; he is currently Advisory Editor for the Bat City Review. A multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize Anthology, his two books of poetry, The Halfway Tree (2000) and Black Butterflies (2004) were both finalists for the Natalie Ornish Award. He is a professor of English at the University of Texas.

Jesse G. Herrera is a XXX shot of tequila like the late, great Chicano poet, Trinidad Sanchez Jr. with a Charles Bukowski chaser, straight up, stone sober. He was born en San Anto, Tejas pero soy de Laredo, Tejas.

Grady Hillman is a well-published poet, literary translator (Spanish, Russian and Quechua), folklorist and essayist. He is the author of two volumes of poetry (Razor Wire received the Austin Book Award in 1986) and a book of Quechua Inca translations, Return of the Inca. He lives in Austin.

Edward Hirsch, president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, taught at the University of Houston for eighteen years.

Tony Hoagland has published three collections of poetry: Sweet Ruin, Donkey Gospel and What Narcissism Means To Me. He teaches at the University of Houston.

Ann Howells serves on the board of Dallas Poets Community—NPC and is editor of its journal, Illya ‘s Honey. She was named a “distinguished poet of Dallas” by the Dallas Library in 2001, and in 2004, was nominated for a Pushcart. Her work appears in many small journals including: Borderlands, Gertrude, Sulphur River Review, Concho River Review, Sentence and several anthologies.