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 Struggle, the Portland Alliance and the Student Insurgent.

George Held's poetry has appeared in many small press publications including Devil Blossoms, The Doomed City and Free Lunch. He lives in New York City.

Sheree Renée Thomas is an emerging poet and short fiction writer whose work has appeared in Ishmael Reed's KONCH magazine, Eugene B. Redmond's Drumvoices Revue, Afaa Michael Weaver's Obsidian III: Literature of the African Diaspora, Voices: The Wisconsin Review of African Literatures, mélange: journal of the written arts, as well as other international publications. She is the editor of the collection, DARK MATTER: A Century of Speculative Fiction of the African Diaspora (Warner, 2000) and the founding editor of the literary journal, ANANSI: Fiction of the African Diaspora. A native of Memphis, she lives in New York with her two daughters.

Michael Sonksen is a poet from Los Angeles. He has self-published three of his own books and performs frequently around Southern California. He appeared previously in The Labyrinth #2 and has work forthcoming in Gnome: the online journal of underground writing.

Frances LeMoines' poetry has appeared previously in The Doomed City, The Lummox Journal, and Poetry USA, among others. She is the co-author of Bourbon Skin (Lummox Press).

Puertoriquena Jane Alberdeston-Coralin came to Washington DC in 1995 and found a home in the black writer's community. She is a fellow of Cave Canem, a writer's workshop for poets of African descent, and one of the co-founders of the Modern Urban Griots, a poetry performance collective. She has performed her work throughout the East Coast in venues such as the Gala Hispanic Theatre, the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in NY, and the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia. She has most recently been published by Bilingual Review (Arizona State University) and Step into A World (John Wiley & Sons). Her poetry collections are called Waters of My Thirst and The Afrotaina Dreams.

Karen Lewis' poetry and short fiction have been previously published in The
Buffalo News, Artvoice, Poetry Motel, TheCaffeine Addict, Candlelight Poetry Journal, In the Spirit of the Buffalo, a-pos'tro-phe, Idiolect and Along the Path. She is an assistant editor of The Caffeine Addict and has work forthcoming in Slipstream, Iodine and Open Cut.

Peter Scheponik's work has appeared previously in Tripwire, The Doomed City, and The 13^th Warrior Review.

Dorothy Doyle Mienko has been published online in Stirring, FZQ, Eclipse, Neiderngasse, Late August, Doomed City, New World Poetry, Poet's Canvas, The Critical Poet, The 2River View and 13^thWR.