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Jeffery Beam is the author of numerous books the most recent being The Broken Flower (Skysill Press), The New Beautiful Tendons: Collected Queer Poems 1969-2012 (Triton Books/Spuyten Duyvil), Midwinter Fires (Seven Kitchens Press), and a 24-copy, letter press edition of MountSeaEden (Chester Creek Press) in which the paper is made from daylily stems and rag. He communes with earth energies and the spirits of Blake, Whitman, Dickinson, Rilke, Rumi, and the Zen Masters at a place of marvels in North Carolina, Golgonooza at Frog Level. Website: www.unc.edu/~jeffbeam/.

Ricks Carson teaches sophomores and seniors at Pace Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. He publishes reviews, poems, letters to various editors, and short critical studies in numerous publications, including OBR.

Jeff Davis attended UNC-Greensboro's MFA program in creative writing, and studied with Robert Creeley at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His poems have appeared in Lillabulero, Iron, Asheville Poetry Review, Nantahala Review, and other little magazines. His books include Transits of Venus (2005) and Natures: Selected Poems, 1972-2005 (2006); the latter was selected by Katherine Stripling Byer, then Poet Laureate of North Carolina, as a North Carolina Notable Book for 2006 and featured on the Laureate's Arts Council website. Since 2005 he has hosted the radio program Wordplay, which celebrates poets and writers of creative prose; it's now available each Sunday at 5:00 PM at Asheville FM, and a catalog of the show archive is posted at naturespoetry.blogspot.com. He teaches in UNCA's Great Smokies Writing Program.

Ivan de Monbrison was born in Paris in 1969 from a French Protestant father and an Egyptian Muslim mother, both mixed with Jewish origins. His interest in art can be linked to a very liberal artistic education, where African and Ocenian arts were in the center of his interests. This left him with a desire to pursue the question of what art meant in the old days, and how can this be dealt with in our modern and absurd world of thriving technology. "I choose to paint mostly in black and white and to represent human beings more as shadows than as fleshy bodies. They are incarnated in the canvas but not yet fully present. I hope that people who have experienced pain and loss in life as absurd and meaningless will be able to connect with these ghostly shapes as images of the sense of precarity they may feel, giving it a depth that goes far beyond the simple pleasure of the eye." Ivan's works have been shown in the recent years in various countries. Website: artmajeur.com/blackowl.

Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco. His poetry and/or criticism appears (or is expected) in: 1913 A Journal of Forms, Amerarcana, American Book Review, Barzakh, Big Bell, Bright Pink Mosquito, Bookslut, c_L Newsletter, The Critical Flame, Dusie, Forklift, Fulcrum, Galatea Resurrects, Greetings, House Organ, Htmlgiant, Life and Death of American Cities, Lightning'd Press house mag, NewPages, Otoliths, Poetry Project Newsletter, Rain Taxi, The Rumpus, Shampoo, Switchback, Wild Orchids, and The Volta. His books include GustonBook and Das Gedichtete.

Sue Farlow is a past president of the North Carolina Poetry Society where she served for six years on the Board of Directors. Her works have been published in anthologies and magazines such as Journalism Education Today. She has twice been runner up in the NCPS Poet Laureate contest. Her chapbook, Waiting for Olivia, chronicles the nine months before her granddaughter was born. After 29 years of teaching, in her retirement Sue currently works with the North Carolina Zoo program, "The Poetry of Conservation." She is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Journalism Education Association

Michael Ferguson lives in San Francisco and writes occasionally for the Journal of Homosexuality and other publications. Recently he has been writing and directing plays at the Fringe of Marin, San Rafael, California.

Born in Virginia, Florence Fogelin lives in Vermont, summers on a lake in New Hampshire, and spends portions of the year in Italy and New York City. She is married to a philosopher and is the mother of three adult sons. She has published poems in Negative Capability, the Cumberland Review, Poet Lore, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, and other journals. Her first chapbook, Facing the Light, was published in 2001 by Redgreene Press of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Poet, writer, and public-interest lawyer, Brian Gilmore is the author of two books of poetry, including Elvis Presley is Alive and Well and Living in Harlem (Third World Press, 1983). His third collection of poetry, We Didn't Know Any Gangsters, will be published in 2014 by Cherry Castle Publishing. A long time columnist with Progressive Media Project, he currently teaches at the Michigan State University College of Law. He divides his time between East Lansing, Michigan, and his home town, Washington, D.C.

Reginald Harris is Poetry in the Branches Coordinator and Information Technology Director for Poets House in New York City. His second book, Autogeography, won the Cave Canem/Northwestern University Poetry Prize.

Kathleen Hellen's collection Umberto's Night won the 2012 Washington Writers' Publishing House poetry prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary; Barrow Street; Drunken Boat; New Letters; Prairie Schooner; and Witness. Her chapbook, The Girl Who Loved Mothra, was published in 2010. Awards include two Pushcart nominations in 2013.

Don Hendershot is a freelance writer and naturalist living in Waynesville, North Carolina. He has written features for Our State, Native American Journal, Smoky Mountain Living, and Louisiana Road Trips magazines. His weekly column, The Naturalist's Corner, has appeared in The Smoky Mountain News since 1999. Hendershot was awarded the Roosevelt-Ashe Society's award for Outstanding Journalist in Conservation 2011. His most coveted title is "Daddy" to 12-year-old Izzy and 8-year-old Maddie. Read more at thenaturalistscorner.com.

Josh Hockensmith is a writer, translator, and book artist living in Pittsboro, North Carolina. He produces artists' books and handmade blank books under the name blue bluer books and is the managing editor of the journal South x Southeast: Haiku and Haiku Arts.

Luisa A. Igloria is the author of Juan Luna's Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame), Trill & Mordent (WordTech Editions, 2005), and 8 other books. Luisa has degrees from the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was a Fulbright Fellow from 1992-1995. She teaches on the faculty of Old Dominion University, where she directs the MFA Creative Writing Program. Since November 2010, she has been writing a poem a day at Dave Bonta's The Morning Porch; the poems are archived at Via Negativa. Website: www.luisaigloria.com.

Elizabeth Kirwin is a poet and performance artist. Her fictional novel, Fairies in America, is available for purchase online. Kirwin is editor and publisher of Fairies in America, a website that gives an overview of the fairy movement in the U.S. which includes: writing, art, spiritual practices, sexuality, and gender. She holds an M.A. in English from Old Dominion University and is a Search Engine Optimization professional. Website: www.fairiesinamerica.com.

Janet Lembke died September 3, 2013, at home, surrounded by friends and her cats, after a lengthy illness. Her latest books are Chickens: Their Natural and Unnatural Histories (Skyhorse, 2012) and an extraordinary fine press book Harvests (Press on Scroll Road, 2010). Her translation of Virgil's Georgics (Yale, 2005) was made under the auspices of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Lyn Lifshin's selected poems, A Girl Goes into the Woods, was published October 1, 2013, by NYQ Books. Other books include: Knife Edge & Absinthe: The Tango Poems (NightBallet Press, 2012); Hitchcock Hotel (Hammer & Anvil Books, 2012); For the Roses: Poems Inspired by Joni Mitchell (March Street Press, 2012); All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead: All True, Especially the Lies (World Parade Books, 2011); Ballroom (March Street Press, 2010); Katrina (Poetic Matrix Press, 2010); Lost Horses (Presa Press, 2009); Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness (Texas Review Press, 2009); Ballet Madonnas (Shoe Music Press, 2009); Persephone (Red Hen Press, 2008); 92 Rapple Drive (Coatlism Press, 2008); Lost in the Fog (Finishing Line Press, 2008); Light at the End: The Jesus Poems (Clevis Hook Press, 2008); The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian (Texas Review Press, 2006); Another Woman Who Looks Like Me (Black Sparrow Press, 2006); Before It's Light (Black Sparrow Press, 1999); and Cold Comfort (Black Sparrow Press, 1997). And forthcoming: Secretariat: the Red Freak, the Miracle; Malala: The Tangled Alphabet: Istanbul Poems; Luminous Women: Eneduanna, Scheherazade and Nefertiti; an e-book of Marilyn Monroe from Rubber Boots Press; a DVD of the film Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass; and an update to the Gale autobiography series, Lips, Blues, Blue Lace: On the Outside. Website: www.lynlifshin.com.

Gina Marie LoBianco is the author of eighteen novels. She publishes books, as well as an online literary magazine called The Fox, at Little Dipper Ink, her independent publishing company. She enjoys making up her own yoga moves and pretending that she's Rodney Yee, and playing ukulele by the pond and scaring all of the fish away.

John Martone's work appears under his Dogwood & Honeysuckle imprint. He is the editor of Frank Samperi's selected poems, Spiritual Necessity, from Station Hill Press.

David Musgrove is a lawyer who lives in a cabin on the Alabama River, ten miles upstream from Montgomery. He has a son named Burns and peacocks living on the roof. Please do not ask him legal advice.

David Need lives in Durham and teaches at Duke University. His poetry, essays, and translations have been in Talisman, Effing Magazine, Hambone, Minor Americans, Golden Handcuff's Review, Ocho, and Mipoesias. He reviews frequently for OBR. His most recent writing project was a year-long memoir suite "Goodnight Irene," drafts of which are published at Goodnight Irene.

Christopher Rizzo is a writer, scholar, and editor who lives in Albany, New York. His latest collection of poems, Of Love & Capital, was selected for the Bob Kaufman Prize for Poetry by judge Bernadette Mayer. His next collection, Near Point Balance, is forthcoming from Skysill Press. He currently lectures at the University at Albany, SUNY.

Mark Spitzer is a gar-fishing literary-translating novel-writing poet-prof somewhere in Arkansas. He likes mowing the lawn, checking his trotline, reading Bukowski, and editing the literary journal Toad Suck Review. Website: www.sptzr.net.

Kit Wienert is the founding editor and publisher of White Dot Press, which has produced a series of limited editions of his and other poets' writing since 1976. In 1978, he collaborated with poet Andrea Wyatt to edit and publish Collected Poems of Max Douglas. In 1985, he moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he works as a writer-editor and occasional theater music composer. He is the author of The Everywhere Province (1975), The Love Unit (1983), Incidental Musics and Fictions (1990), Idylls and Admonitions (1990), and Doctrines of the Moment (2002); a selected poems, Clarion Planet Windows (2005); and a poetry-and-prose-travelogue-cum-novella, Scouring the Reaches (2009). His latest book of poems, In a New Light, was published in the summer of 2012. Website: www.kitwienert.com.