Laurel Blossom is guest editor of this month's feature. [Preface] She is co-editor of Heliotrope: a journal of poetry and the editor of two anthologies, Splash! Great Writing About Swimming and Many Lights in Many Windows: Twenty Years of Great Poetry and Fiction from The Writers Community (the residency program of the YMCA National Writer's Voice). She has published three books of poetry, the latest of which is The Papers Said (Greenhouse Review Press). She has recently completed a book-length poem, Degrees of Latitude, two sections of which will soon appear in xconnect and online at thingsmagazine. "Elegy in the Flesh" is from her manuscript, Brink of Extinction.

Martha Collins is Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. Her most recent book of poems is Some Things Words Can Do (Sheep Meadow Press).

Elisabeth Lewis Corley is a poet, actor and screenwriter who lives and works in North Carolina. Her poems have appeared in Feminist Studies, Southern Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly, and Hyperion, among other publications.

Alfred Corn is the author of nine books of poems, including Stake: Selected Poems 1972-1992 (1999) and Contradictions (Copper Canyon, 2002). He has also published a novel, Part of His Story, and a collection of critical essays, The Metamorphoses of Metaphor. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The Nation and contributes art criticism to Art in America and ARTNews; in 2001, Abrams published Aaron Rose, Photographer, for which he supplied the introduction.

Patrick Donnelly's first collection of poems is The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003). He is an Associate Editor at Four Way Books, and received his MFA from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Marlboro Review, and Barrow Street. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Kathy Fagan is the author, most recently, of The Charm (Zoo Press, 2002). She directs the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, where she also co-edits The Journal.

Annie Finch's most recent book of poetry is Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003). Other books of poetry include Eve (Story Line Press, 1997) and The Encyclopedia of Scotland (Salt Publishing, forthcoming). She is completing A Poet's Craft, a textbook. The founder of the Discussion of Women's Poetry listserv, she teaches at Miami University and lives in Cincinnati and in Maine.

Joan Fiset's book of memoir prose poems, Now the Day is Over (Blue Begonia, 1997), won the King County Arts Commission's Publication Award, and her Vagaries of Lightning is announced in this issue as winner of Big City Lit's 2003 chapbook contest. She is a psychotherapist in private practice in Seattle, and a PTSD State Contractor with the Department of Veteran Affairs.

Amy Holman's poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize; her work has been published in many print and online journals, including xconnect, Manhattan Review, and American Letters & Commentary, and in the anthologies And We are Creatures (Dream Horse Press), Mercy of Tides (Salt Marsh Pottery Press), and The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner). Her fiction has been published in Night Train and SHADE and she has contributed essays to The Practical Writer (Penguin, 2004) and Making the Perfect Pitch (The Writer Books, 2004). A literary consultant, she co-founded the Publishing Seminars at Poets & Writers, Inc. in New York City.

In 2003, Richard Levine's What Light Will Bring was a finalist for the Ohio State University Press Poetry Book Award, while individual poems were runner-ups for the Winning Writers War Poetry Contest, and for the Robert Frost Foundation's Poetry Award. His To Find the World Still was a 2002 Big City Lit chapbook finalist. Work has appeared in Big City Lit, Comstock Review, Many Mountains Moving, North American Review, and SOLO. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Deena Linett's most recent book is Rare Earth (BOA Editions). A collaborative show of her work, with weaver Aimee Picard, is on view at Montclair (New Jersey) State University Art Galleries. New work is forthcoming from Rattapallax, The Southern Review, and Near East Review Annual, published in Ankara (Turkey).

Rebecca Newth has published five books of poetry, one memoir, two children's books, and an award-winning one-page play. She has received an NEA Prize in poetry, an Arkansas Arts Council Fellowship for a novel-in-progress, and recently returned from a residency at the Glen Arbor Art Association in Michigan.

Sharon Olinka's work was published in An Eye For An Eye Makes The World Blind, which won the PEN Josephine Miles Award. She recently completed a novel, and writes reviews for the American Book Review.

Paul Pines has published two novels (The Tin Angel and Redemption) and five books of poetry (Onion, Hotel Madden Poems, Pines Songs, Breath, and, most recently, Adrift on Blinding Light). Selections from his work, set to music by composer Daniel Asia, appear on the CD's, Songs from the Page of Swords and Breath in a Ram's Horn (Summit). He teaches American Literature and Creative Writing at Adirondack Community College, practices as a psychotherapist at Glens Falls (New York) Hospital, and hosts the annual Lake George Jazz Weekend.

Earl Roberts III recently published a chapbook of poetry, Poems in the Key of Grief. He has had fiction and poetry published in Coal, Backspace:  A Queer Literary Zine, Poets at Work, Wordplay, Moon Reader, Big City Lit, and in five anthologies. His art has been included in two shows in the gallery of Bright Hill Center, and he has served on the Board of Directors of Bright Hill Press. An occasional artist's model, he has served as the pastor of several United Methodist churches and has written on religion for the pages of various local newspapers. His non-fiction story, "Top Button," was broadcast as part of NPR's "National Story Project." He lives in Oneonta, New York with his wife and surviving son.

David Romtvedt's books of poetry include Certainty (White Pine Press) and A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know (Copper Canyon Press), which was selected by John Haines for the National Poetry Series. He has published a collection of essays, Windmill:  Essays from Four Mile Ranch (Red Crane Books) and plays dance music of the Americas with the Wyoming band, Fireants. The poems in this feature are from his new manuscript, Fire by the Lake (or Some Church).

Nicholas Samaras won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker. He teaches poetry at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, and runs the Writer's Voice program at the Tampa YMCA. He and his wife have recently come home from Greece with their newly adopted infant son, Kallistos.

Barry Seiler divides his time between rural upstate New York and Newark, New Jersey, where he teaches at Rutgers University. His most recent book is Frozen Falls (University of Akron Press).

Peggy Steele was an editor of the journal Plainsong for many years. She and her husband, Frank Steele, have co-authored a book of poems, Singing Into That Fresh Light (Blue Sofa Press). Her work has appeared in The American Voice, The Worcester Review, The Blue Sofa Review, Adena, The Small Farm, and others; one of her poems was selected in 1999 for inclusion in Best American Poetry. Some of her short fiction has also appeared in anthologies. She lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Sharon Thomson is Poet-in-Residence at Grailville, an environmental retreat center in Loveland, Ohio. Her latest chapbook, Sharon Thomson:  Greatest Hits, has been published by Pudding House Publications.

Rob Wright's poems have been published in Big City Lit and in the Lyric Recovery award anthologies, Water to Wine to Waterford® (2000) and Rain of One Ocean (2002), and in Siren's Silence. He has twice been a semi-finalist in the Lyric Recovery Festival and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2001. He lives in Philadelphia.