Writer/editor/teacher giovanni singleton a native of Richmond, VA, received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Poetics from The New College of California (San Francisco). In 1999, she founded nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts. She has received fellowships from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop and the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Writers Workshop, and Cave Canem. singleton is a recipient of the 1999 New Langton Bay Area Award Show for Literature. From 1997-2002, she served as a member of the Board of Directors for Small Press Traffic, a literary arts center in San Francisco.

Her work has appeared in a number of publications including Five Fingers Review, Fence, Aufgabe, Proliferation, Chain, Callaloo, The Breast: An Anthology (Global City Press; New York, 1994), and Beyond the Frontier: African American Poets for the Millennium, edited by E. Ethelbert Miller (Black Classic Press; Maryland, 2002). In response to a commission from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2000, her writing was displayed on exterior of the Center's building for 10 weeks. She has taught poetry in the San Francisco Unified School District and at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, CA.

Douglas Kearney (Altadena, CA) received an MFA in Writing at the California Institute of the Arts (2004). He is the editor of Cave Canem IX, a poetry anthology. His poetry has been anthologized in Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, Bum Rush The Page, and Role Call, and published in several journals including Callaloo and nocturnes(re)view. He has performed his poetry all over the country, including commissioned work for the Weisman Museum of Art in Minneapolis, a showcase performance at the 2002 Slam Nationals, LA's World Stage and New York's Public Theatre. Kearney is currently developing an opera in an invented language with composer Grisha Coleman. He has designed books for Cave Canem, Chicago poet M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde, and multiple Slam Championship Winner Thien-bao Thuc Phi. He co-produced Blue/Print, an audio CD featuring Harryette Mullen, Fred Moten, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith and others. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and BreadLoaf. He was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Altadena, CA. He teaches poetry at CalArts. His first collection of poems entitled Fear, some will be released by Red Hen Press in 2005.

Arnold J. Kemp is an artist whose practice includes writing, performance and the production of visual art, such as sculpture, drawings and photographs. He has had solo exhibitions of his artwork at the San Francisco African and African American Historical Society, San Francisco; The Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco; and Debs & Co, New York City. Kemp has also shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. He has received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the ArtCouncil. He is also an associate curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California. His writing has appeared in Callaloo, Three Rivers Poetry Journal, Agni Review, Mirage Periodical, nocturnes, River Styx, and Art Journal, among others. He lives in San Francisco.

Douglas "D. Scot" Miller is a Bay Area writer, visual artist, and teacher. A founder of The BlackBard Writing Collective, a regular contributor to The East Bay Express, YRB NYC, Showcase Magazine, and has published the afro-surreal Knot Frum Hear(an excerpt will appear in the forthcoming Bronx Biannual Two, Akashic Books, February 2007), and Slicker, a book of poems. He divides his time between writing, wearing nothing but a bowler hat, and taking care of his son, Tre.

opalmoore is an Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing and Chair of the Department of English at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA. A native of Chicago, Moore earned a B.F.A. from Illinois Wesleyan University, M.A. in Printmaking and Drawing at the University of Iowa, and M.F.A. at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Moore has co-edited the column, "Cultural Pluralism", for the Children's Literature Association Quarterly since 1984. Ms. Moore's fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Connecticut Review, African American Review, Honey, Hush!: An Anthology of African American Women's Humor, and elsewhere. Her book of poetry, Lot's Daughters was published by Third World Press in 2004.

Vanessa Merina was born in Los Angeles, schooled in Bennington, Vermont. She currently lives in San Francisco and works for a public policy research organization. Merina writes short fiction and some poetry. Her work has appeared in Silo (Bennington, VT), Upstairs at Duroc (Paris, France), and the Asian American Women's Artist Assn. (AAWAA) Educational Packet (SF, CA)

Harryette Mullen is the author of six poetry books, most recently Blues Baby (Bucknell, 2002) and Sleepingwith the Dictionary (University of California, 2 002). The latter was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and National Book Award. She is a professor of English and African American Studies at UCLA.

Amarnath Ravva is a writer and video artist living in Los Angeles. He has published several poems in Interlope: a Journal of Asian American poetics, nocturnes, The Berkeley Poetry Review and has work forthcoming in the anthologies Risen from the East: the Poetry of the Non-Western World, and Writing the Lines of our Hands. He has produced two documentary video pieces, 1977 and Sodi, and received an M.F.A. in Writing/Integrated Media from CalArts in 2004. He is currently working on his first book, American Canyon.