Robb Jackson was born and raised in Ohio, where he spent much of his time growing up exploring the water, beaches, coves and swamps along Lake Erie. He’s gone to school a lot, and he’s enjoyed a number of different jobs, but nineteen years ago he exchanged his sweet water origins for a saltwater life on the coastal bend of the Gulf of Mexico in south Texas where he writes and teaches at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Angélique Jamail earned her degree in Creative Writing – English from the University of Houston. Her first book, Gypsies (1998) had two printings. Her second, Barefoot on Marble: Twenty Poems 1995-2001, came out in 2003. Her work has appeared in seventeen publications.

Ken Jones has been a published poet for over 20 years in academic and underground journals, magazines, anthologies, websites and other forums. He earned an M.A. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a full-time faculty member at The Art Institute of Houston. He has also given readings of his work at innumerable bookstores, bars, coffeehouses, conferences and other forums. His collection of poems Unutterable Blunders and Palace Disasters was released by PlainView Press in 2006.

Melanie Jordan was raised in Middle Tennessee, though she currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Iowa Review, Third Coast, Southeast Review, Crab Orchard Review, and others. She was recently an editor for Gulf Coast and Lyric Poetry Review, and would love to edit another journal soon. She teaches for the Houston Community College and the University of Houston. Her manuscript, The Broken Zoo, was a finalist for Switchback Books’ 2007 Gatewood Prize.

Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan received an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Virginia, and an M.A. in literature from the University of California at Berkeley. At the University of Houston she was a Cambor Fellow and earned a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing. In 2006 her poetry manuscript was selected by Kimiko Hahn for the Four Way Books 2006 Intro Prize in Poetry. She works as a full-time instructor at Houston Community College. She lives in Houston with her husband, Raj and their three cats.

Sharon Klander’s poems have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Republic, Kansas Quarterly, Shenandoah, and New Letters, and in anthologies, including The Writing Room and The Art and Craft of Poetry. In addition, her poetry was judged 1st Place in the 1998 New Letters Literary Awards and 2nd Place in the 2001 American Literary Review Competition. Her published scholarship concerns the poetry of John Haines and Colette Inez. She teaches at Houston Community College.

Jacqueline Kolosov’s poetry collection is Vago (Lewis-Clark, 2007). Modigliani’s Muse is forthcoming (WordTech). Her young adult novel is The Red Queen’s Daughter (Hyperion, 2007). She is on the creative writing faculty at Texas Tech.

Judith Kroll, author of two collections of poetry, has also published poems in Poetry, The New Yorker, and Southern Review, and a critical book on Sylvia Plath. Her creative nonfiction has been published in journals including Kenyon Review, Southwest Review, and River City. Recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry, Kroll has been awarded other grants for creative nonfiction and for translating South Indian mystical poems. She is on the Creative Writing faculty of The University of Texas at Austin.

Laurie Clements Lambeth’s first collection of poetry, Veil and Burn, was selected by Maxine Kumin for the 2006 National Poetry Series Open Competition. A PhD and MFA graduate of the University of Houston, her poems and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Houston.

Erica Lehrer is a poet, journalist and founding member of Net Poets Society (NetPoSo), a Houston-based poets’ group. Her writing has appeared in both national and regional publications. A graduate of Princeton University (BA, English) and N.Y.U. Law School, she never thought she’d be living in Texas. However, she’s loving it!

Rich Levy is a poet and (since 1995) executive director of Inprint, a nonprofit literary arts organization in Houston. He earned his MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and his poems have appeared in Boulevard, Gulf Coast, Pool, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. A jazz obsessive, he and his wife have three children, two dogs, and one sleepy cat.

Michael Lieberman has published four collections of poetry. His new book, Far-From-Equilibrium Conditions, will be published in November 2007, and won the Texas Review Poetry Prize for 2007. He is a research physician who lives with his wife Susan in Houston.

Inspired by an Inprint workshop, Thad Logan has recently completed an MFA in creative writing at Warren Wilson College. For the past twenty years, she has been teaching in the English Department at Rice University, specializing in Victorian Studies. She and her husband live in Houston, with their daughter and other animals.

Robert Lunday is the author of one book of poetry, Mad Flights (Ashland Poetry Press, 2001). He is currently finishing a memoir, Fayettenam, based on his father’s letters home from Vietnam in 1969.

Peggy Zuleika Lynch has a BS from UT, Austin, and an MFA (highest honors) from SMU, Dallas. She was short listed for Poet Laureate of Texas for 2007/2008, and has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes.

Cynthia Macdonald founded the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston in 1979. She has published six collections of poems, Amputations, Transplants, (W)holes, Alternate Means of Transport, Living Wills and I Can't Remember. Her grants and awards include an NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Academy and Institute of Art and letters Award in recognition of her achievement in poetry. Retired from teaching, she lives in Houston, Texas.

Dodie Messer Meeks has poetry in a couple of hundred literary quarterlies and a couple of murder mysteries available on Amazon.com. She’s working on a novel set in Galveston in the fifties. An illustrated collection of her poetry entitled, When I Got Dressed Again, published by the Arts Alliance in Clear Lake City, has sold out.

John R. Milkereit has been writing for several years and was juried poet at the 2007 Austin International Poetry Festival and will be published in Swirl later. He recently completed two Inprint poetry workshops while holding down his day job as a salesperson. He owns an ivy plant and some fake fish.

Laura Elizabeth Miller is a dancer, poet, and new mother.

Carolina Monsiváis is a recipient of the Premio Poesía Tejana for her book, Somewhere Between Houston and El Paso: Testimonies of a Poet (Wings Press). A dedicated advocate/activist in the field of violence against women and children, Monsiváis co-founded The Women Writers’ Collective. She completed her M.F.A. in poetry at New Mexico State University, and she resides in her hometown, El Paso, Texas.

Jack Myers, the 2003 Poet Laureate of Texas, is the author of seventeen books of and about poetry including The Portable Poetry Workshop (Thomson/Wadsworth, 2004) and The Glowing River: New & Selected Poems (Invisible Cities Press, 2001). He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and is a National Poetry Series Open Competition winner. He is former Director of creative writing at Southern Methodist Univ. and current president of The Writer’s Garrett, a Dallas literary center.