Contributor's Notes

Walidah Imarisha recently moved to Philadelphia from from Portland, Oregon where she was a member of the Portland Poetry Slam team for two years at the Poetry Slam Nationals, and one year as Portland's Grand Slam Poetry Champion in 2000. She also joined the 2000 Slam America poetry bus tour for the west coast leg. Her work has appeared in publications such as In Struggle, the Portland Alliance and the Student Insurgent.

Adam Stone is a poet and nomad currently stationed in Burlington, Vermont, where he co-hosts slams at The Rhombus Gallery, and an open mic series at The Metronome. He was the 1998 National Forensic Association New England Champion in both Poetry and Prose Interpretation. He has also been a member of the 1999 Cape Cod and the 2000 Boston Slam Teams at The National Poetry Slam Finals and is currently serving out his term as the 2000 Spoken Word Poet Laureate for Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

This is Mike Sonksen's first appearance in The Labyrinth.

Maryann Hazen-Stearns is the poetry editor of The Writer's Hood and has been published in hundreds of print and electronic magazines. Her most recent poetry collection is The Limbo Stick.

Samantha Libby Sodickson lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, Aaron, and her cat, Malik. She is staff editor for the online journal, Innovations in End-of-Life Care and represented Boston in the 1999 National Poetry Slam.

Leah Gardner's articles and essays have appeared in The Vermont Times and Outright, and she currently hosts a talk show in Burlington, Vermont. She was a member of Vermont's 2000 national slam team.

Grace Beniquez resides in New York City.

Marjorie Barnes lives in Newark, NJ and teaches in the English Department at Union County College.

Oni was born in Montreal, Québec Canada. She thinks of herself as a scribe and her style embodies poetics ranging anywhere from hip hop to haiku. Her signature piece, "I Am Not Ashamed to Say That I Am in Pain," was inspired by the case of Oji Adisa, a student who was brutalized by police during an exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum.