Sara Levine is the author of the story collection Short Dark Oracles (Caketrain Press) and the novel Treasure Island!!! (forthcoming from Tonga Books). Her essays have been anthologized in The Touchstone Anthology of Creative Nonfiction: 1970 to the Present and Nine Years: A Best of Fence.  Various short prose things can be found in Nerve, The Iowa Review, Puerto del Sol, Necessary Fiction, Brain, Child, The Fairy Tale Review, and other magazines. She teaches in the Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jesse Ball is a poet and novelist. He is the author of The Curfew (Vintage), The Village on Horseback (Mlikweed), The Way Through Doors (Vintage), Samedi the Deafness (Vintage), Vera & Linus (Nyhil), Og svo kom nottin (Nyhil), and March Book (Grove). His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry. He won the 2008 Plimpton Prize for the novella, The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp & Carr. He is an assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Chad Sweeney is the author of three books of poetry, Parable of Hide and Seek (Alice James Books, 2010), Arranging the Blaze (Anhinga, 2009) and An Architecture (BlazeVox, 2007), and five chapbooks, most recently The Lost Notebooks of Juan Sweeney (Forklift, 2010)—and is cotranslator, from the Farsi, of the Selected Poems of H.E. Sayeh (White Pine, 2011). Sweeney’s work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Court Green, New American Writing and elsewhere. He is coeditor of Parthenon West Review and editor of Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds (City Lights, 2009). Chad is a PhD candidate at Western Michigan University where he teaches poetry and serves as assistant editor of New Issues Press. He lives in Kalamazoo with his wife, poet Jennifer K. Sweeney and their newborn son, Liam.

William Olsen has published four books of poetry, including Avenue Of Vanishing (Northwestern, 2007). His fifth collection Sand Theory is released officially April 1, 2011. His awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Breadloaf. Magazine awards include Poetry Northwest, Crazyhorse, and two Pushcart Prize awards. His poems and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Poetry, Poets of the New Millenium, Triquarterly, Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, and The New Republic. He is co-editor with Sharon Bryan of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life (Sarabande, 2003). He teaches in the MFA and Ph.D. Creative Writing programs at Western Michigan University and at the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. He edits New Issues Poetry and Prose.

Cris Mazza has authored sixteen books, most recently Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls, a novel. Her other fiction titles include Waterbaby, Trickle-Down Timeline, and the critically notable Is It Sexual Harassment Yet? She also has a collection of personal essays, Indigenous: Growing Up Californian. A native of Southern California, Mazza grew up in San Diego County. She currently lives 50 miles west of Chicago and is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Davis Schneiderman is a multimedia artist and writer and the author or editor of eight print and audio works, including the novels Drain (TriQuarterly/Northwestern) and Abecedarium (Chiasmus) and the forthcoming blank novel, Blank: a novel (Jaded Ibis), with audio from Dj Spooky; the co-edited collections Retaking the Universe: Williams S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization (Pluto) and The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game (Nebraska); as well as the audiocollage Memorials to Future Catastrophes (Jaded Ibis). His creative work has appeared in numerous publications including Fiction International, The Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, and Exquisite Corpse. His Busted Books YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/BustedBooks) takes deconstruction seriously. His reading tour for Drain includes the University of Notre Dame, Binghamton University, the University at Buffalo, and The New School, among others. He is Chair of the English Department at Lake Forest College, and also Director of Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books. He edits The &NOW AWARDS: The Best Innovative Writing. He can be found, virtually, at davisschneiderman.com

Lina ramona Vitkauskas is the co-editor of the 8-year running, online literary magazine, milk magazine, www.milkmag.org. Her poetry chapbooks include: THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2007), Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006), and Shooting Dead Films with Poets (Fractal Edge Press, 2004). Her poetry and fiction have been included in many anthologies and publications including The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2007), Van Gogh’s Ear (Paris), Rampike (University of Windsor), The Prague Literary Review, The Chicago Review, MiPoesias, Moria , and Paper Tiger (Australia), among others. Forthcoming publications and upcoming projects include poetry in 2008 Outside Voices Anthology (Outside Voices, 2008), Another Chicago Magazine, Aufgabe, Arabesques (Algeria), and Cervena Barva Press. She has her MA in Creative Writing from Wright State University and is also the upcoming Lithuanian editor/advisor of UniVerse, a United Nations of poetry www.universeofpoetry.org. Her web site is at www.linaramona.com.

GINA MYERS lives in Saginaw, MI, where she edits Lame House Press and serves as Reviews Editor for H_NGM_N. Her most recent chapbook is Behind the R (ypolita press 2008), and her first full-length collection, A Model Year, will be published by Coconut Books this summer.

NICK DEMSKE works at the Racine Public Library. His writing appears in Action Yes, Sawbuck, The Bathroom Magazine, Fact-Simile, Blazevox, Moria and Queef. He curates the BONK! performance series in Racine and is editor of the online forum boo: a journal of terrific things.