Charles Bernstein is the author of over 40 books, ranging from large-scale collections of poetry and essays to pamphlets, libretti, çs, and collaborations, most recently All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems (2010) from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions (University of Chicago Press, 2011). Recent full-lengtht works of poetry include Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006), With Strings (University of Chicago Press, 2001), and Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000). He has published two books of essays and one essay/poem collection: My Way: Speeches and Poems (University of Chicago Press, 1999); A Poetics (Harvard University Press, 1992); Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Sun & Moon Press, 1986, 1994; reprinted by Northwestern University Press, 2001). Shadowtime (Green Integer, 2005) is the libretto he wrote for Brian Ferneyhough's opera and Blind Witness (Factory School, 2008) collects the libretti he wrote for Ben Yarmolinsky. The Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays & Inventions (University of Chicago Press) recently appeared. Bernstein is Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania. See full bio at Electronic Poetry Center
Ann Bogle's short stories and prose poems appear online at Black Ice, Big Bridge, Minnetonka Review, Mad Hatters’ Review and MHR blog, Istanbul Literary Review, Metazen, Blip, Wigleaf, Big City Lit, fwriction : review, Whale Sound, Thrice Fiction, Wordgathering, Ragazine, THIS Literary Magazine, and Fictionaut. Solzhenitsyn Jukebox, a collection of five stories, and Country Without a Name, 24 stories and prose poems, were published by Argotist Ebooks in 2010 and 2011. Visit Ana Verse at: http://annbogle.blogspot.com/.
Michael Boughn, on the occasion of being shortlisted for Canada's Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2011, was described in the Globe and Mail as “an obscure veteran poet with a history of being overlooked by the mainstream." He is the author of H.D.: A Bibliography 1905 - 1990 (University of Virginia, 1993) and co-editor (with Victor Coleman) of Robert Duncan's The H.D. Book (University of California, 2011), as well as being editor of Narthex and other stories by H.D. (BookThug, 2011). His recent book of poetry, Cosmographia - A Post-Lucretian Faux Micro-Epic (Book Thug, 2010), was shortlisted for the aforementioned Prestigious Prize at the same time his mystery novel, Business As Usual, was published by NeWest (Edmonton). Great Canadian Poems for the Aged Vol.1 Illus. Ed. is forthcoming from BookThug in 2012.
Jonathan Brannen is the author of twelve volumes of poetry and five books of visual literature. His most recent collections are this is visual poetry (this is visual poetry chapbooks, Kingston PA, 2010), a sequence of full color word art, Mona Lisa (Avantacular Press, 2010), a sequence of visual poems he created combining computer constructed images and photocopying between 1975 and 1982, and Deaccessioned Landscapes, a collection of technically innovative sonnets (Chax Press, Tucson, AZ, 2005). His poetry and fiction have been anthologized in five countries on three continents and translated into two languages. He grew up in Florida and currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Sara Brickner is a recovering alt-weekly writer who lives in Seattle. This is her first published poem.
Elizabeth Burns is an award winning poet and novelist, whose best-selling novel, TILT (Sourcebooks/Berkley), is described as a "lyrical tour-de-force." Her essays, poetry, and short fiction have appeared nationally and internationally, online and in print, most recently on thefeministwire.com. Originally from Massachusetts, she now lives in Minneapolis and is the proud mother of Cece and Molly.
Andrea Canter is a leading Twin Cities jazz journalist, photographer, and blogger. More information about Jazz Central is available at http://jazzcentral.squarespace.com, where you can request to be added to the mailing list to hear about the Monday night performance schedule. This article adapted from an article posted on Jazz Police. See Andrea’s own blog http://jazzink.blogspot.com/
Jill Chan writes poems and fiction. Her work has been published in various New Zealand literary magazines (and anthologies) both in print and online; in websites in the US, UK, Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia; and in the New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive. She is the author of six collections: The Art of It: Three Novellas (2011), published as an ebook; On Love: a poem sequence (2011); Early Work: Poems 2000-2007 (2011); These Hands Are Not Ours (ESAW,2009), winner of the Earl of Seacliff Poetry Prize; Becoming Someone Who Isn’t (ESAW, 2007); and The Smell of Oranges (ESAW, 2003).
John Colburn is originally from Mantorville, MN, and is an editor and co-publisher at Spout Press. His poetry chapbook, Kissing, was published by Fuori Editions in 2002 and a second chapbook The Lawrence Welk Diaries, by WinteRed Press in 2006. His writing has appeared in such journals as Fairy Tale Review, Jubilat, Black Warrior Review, Spinning Jenny, Sidebrow and Esque. He also plays in the improvised music collective Astronaut Cooper's Parade. Spout Press, Astronaut Cooper's Parade
Marilyn Crispell is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where she studied classical piano and composition, and has been a resident of Woodstock, New York since 1977 when she came to study and teach at the Creative Music Studio. She discovered jazz through the music of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and other contemporary jazz players and composers. For ten years she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble and has been a member of the Barry Guy New Orchestra and guest with his London Jazz Composers Orchestra, as well as a member of the Henry Grimes Trio, Quartet Noir (with Urs Leimgruber, Fritz Hauser and Joelle Leandre), and Anders Jormin's Bortom Quintet. In 2005 she performed and recorded with the NOW Orchestra in Vancouver, Canada and in 2006 she was co-director of the Vancouver Creative Music Institute and a faculty member at the Banff Centre International Workshop in Jazz.
Besides working as a soloist and leader of her own groups, Crispell has performed and recorded extensively with well-known players on the American and international jazz scene. She's also performed and recorded music by contemporary composers Robert Cogan, Pozzi Escot, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Manfred Niehaus and Anthony Davis (including four performances of his opera "X" with the New York City Opera).
In addition to playing, she has taught improvisation workshops and given lecture/demonstrations at universities and art centers in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and has collaborated with videographers, filmmakers, dancers and poets.
Crispell has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grants (1988-1989, 1994-1995 and 2006-2007), a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission (1988-1989), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005-2006). In 1996 she was given an Outstanding Alumni Award by the New England Conservatory, and in 2004, was cited as being one of their 100 most outstanding alumni of the past 100 years. http://marilyncrispell.com/
Maria Damon teaches poetry and poetics at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry and Postliterary America: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries; the co-author, with mIEKAL aND, of Literature Nation, Erosion, and pleasureTEXTpossession; and co-editor, with Ira Livingston, of Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader. She will be the featured artist in issue 2 of Altered Scale.
Born amidst the sad cartoon of Nixon’s America and Evel Knievel’s ill-fated jump across the Snake River Canyon, Trevor Dodge spent big chunks of his childhood listening to Jackson 5 and Journey records. Everything was going fine until his next door neighbor brought over Queen’sNews of the World album; the cover art depicted a massive robot squishing people between its fingers. Needless to say, twenty years of nightmares started immediately. He has taught courses in composition, literature, fiction writing, comics and game studies at Illinois State University, Boise State University, Pacific Northwest College of Art and Clackamas Community College. His first novella, Yellow #10 was published in 2003 by Eraserhead Press; a collection of short fiction, Everyone I Know Lives on Roads followed in 2006 from Chiasmus Press.
Terry Folz —Terrence is an experimental poet who's influences include poets of the Beat era such as Charles Bukowski and Delmore Schwartz, but also the dadaists/surrealists and French symbolist poets such as Baudelaire. He's read at various poetry mics in the twin cities since moving here in 1990. A few of these include readings at Kieran's Irish Pub, Speedboat Gallery, The Artists Quarter,The Beat Cafe, Tillie's Bean, Dusty's Bar, The Nicollet, and the Coffee Gallery. For a year Terrence hosted a monthly open mic at the Coffee Gallery. Mr. Folz is also a member of Vonnegut's Bureau, a spoken word band, along with musicians Rush Merchant and Richard Griffith. Watch for them at a coffeehouse or bar near you.
Sarah Fox lives in Minneapolis with John Colburn and her daughter Nora Wynn. She has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bush Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation, as well as grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her poems and reviews have been published in Conduit, jubilat, Verse, puppyflowers, Spout, Swerve, Forklift: Ohio, Shattered Wig, Zoland Poetry, Handsome, Rain Taxi, the Boston Review, and many others. She's a teacher and a doula, co-founder of the Center for Visionary Poetics, and the publisher of Fuori Editions. She grows and loves entheogenic plants.
Vernon Frazer most recent books of poetry are Unsettled Music and T(exto)-V(isual) Poetry. Enigmatic Ink has published Frazer’s new novel, Field Reporting. Frazer’s web site is http://www.vernonfrazer.net. Bellicose Warbling, the blog that updates his web page, can be read at http://bellicosewarbling.blogspot.com/, His work may also be viewed art Scribd.com and on YouTube. Frazer is married. Though he often worked with vestiges of traditional structures, his symphonic language is most often rooted in a highly allusive kind of metamorphosis through developing variation which amounts almost to a musical 'stream of consciousness'. The products of this language are amazingly diverse in their procedures and atmosphere, and they display a trend to ever-greater concentration of thought as well as an almost unparalleled capacity for self-renewal at the most fundamental creative levels. CHECK TO SEE IF THIS IS VERNON
Heather Fuller grew up in Keflavik, Iceland; Dale City, Virginia; and Henderson, North Carolina. She now resides in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside D.C. She has worked with non-profits on homelessness and poverty issues for the past eight years and edits poetry & book reviews for The Washington Review, as well as practices venipuncture on oranges, on the side. Her first volume of poetry was perhaps this is a rescue fantasy (Edge Books, 1997); her second,Dovecote, is due out in 2001, also from Edge. In addition, she has two chapbooks: beggar (Situation Magazine, 1998) and Eyeshot (Propjet, 1999). Poetry, excerpts of plays, essays, and reviews have appeared in alyricmailer, Antenym, articulate, Aufgabe, Big Allis, Cartograffiti, Chain, Combo, distance carrier, Georgetown Journal on Fighting Poverty, kenning, Membrane, Mirage #4/Period[ical], the minnesota review, On Your Knees Citizen, Philly Talks Newsletter, Phoebe, Poetry New York, Primary Writing, random, read.me, Situation, So to Speak, The Organ, The Tangent, two girls review, the washington review, and Zazil. Collaborations include: fiber art & poetry collaboration with Perreaoult Daniels in the Cooks Smell Time group installation at the Ruthless Grip, D.C.; printmaking & poetry collaboration with Susan Goldman for the Corcoran Print Portfolio 2000; photography & poetry collaboration with Michelle Frankfurter for Membrane; letterpress & poetry collaboration with Buck Downs and the Pyramid Atlantic letterpress shop for Pyramid Atlantic Signature Series Postcards; and voice collaboration with Gray Snead for Snake Hiss: A Transcendental Friend Audio Project.
Chris Funkhouser is Associate Professor and Director of the Communication and Media program in the Department of Humanities at New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he teaches Digital Poetry, Electronic Literature, Cybertext, and other courses. He has also taught seminars at Naropa University (2007) and University of Pennsylvania (2010), and is a Senior Editor at PennSound. He is author of Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archeology of Forms, 1959-1995 (2007), New Directions in Digital Poetry (2012), and the chapbooks Electro þerdix (Least Weasel, 2011), LambdaMOO_Sessions (Writer's Forum, 2006), and an e-book (CD-ROM), Selections 2.0, published by the Faculty of Creative Multimedia at Multimedia University (Malaysia), where he was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar in 2006. See http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous for more information.
Peter Ganick was for years editor and publisher of Abacus journal and then Potes and Poets Press. Today, he continues in this vein with Blue Lion Books. peterganick.com
Geoffrey Gatza is the editor and Publisher of the small press BlazeVOX. He has received several awards, one from the Fund for Poetry and a Boomerang Award. He is the author many books of poetry, including Secrets of my Prison House (2010). Kenmore: Poem Unlimited (2009) and Not So Fast Robespierre (Menendez Publishing 2008). His writings for children’s include HouseCat Kung Fu: Strange Poems for Wild Children (Meritage Press 2008), and Kindle books, A Rocket Full of Pie and The Diamond who wanted to be a Ruby. He is also the author of the yearly Thanksgiving Menu-Poem Series, a book length poetic tribute for prominent poets, now in it's tenth year. He is a CIA trained chef, a former Marine, a lifelong Sherlockian and an avid philatelist. He lives in Buffalo, NY with his girlfriend and two beloved cats. http://www.geoffreygatza.com/ & http://www.blazevox.org
Data entry specialist by day and rocker by night, Grant Grays currently resides in Seattle.
Since moving to Minneapolis in 2005, Zacc Harris has gained a reputation as one of the area's top guitarists, leading a host of creative projects including Atlantis Quartet, named 2011 Best Jazz Artist of the Twin Cities by the Citypages, as well as Vital Organ, Monk In Motian, and the Zacc Harris Trio and Quartet. Jazz Improv Magazine says, "Harris delivers a sound that is lucid, clear...providing rich-sounding accompaniment, and well-crafted solos" while Cadence Magazine calls some of Harris' work on Atlantis Quartet's most recent album "worthy of John McLaughlin." Zacc is also a busy sideman, having performed and recorded with countless artists, including Debbie Duncan, Bruce Henry, Babatunde Lea, Katie Gearty, Adam Meckler, John Starkey, Jay Epstein, Nancy Harms and more. A graduate of Southern Illinois University, Zacc has studied privately with Adam Rogers, Jonathan Kreisberg, and Fareed Haque. Zacc has taught privately for the past 12 years and is currently adjunct faculty in the music department at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. http://zaccharris.com/html/about.php
Greg Hewett is the author of three previous collections, including Darkacre, which have received a Publishing Triangle Award, two Minnesota Book Award nominations, and an Indie Bound Poetry Top Ten recommendation. The recipient of Fulbright fellowships to Denmark and Norway, Hewett has been a fellow at the Camargo Foundation in Provence, and is currently Associate Professor of English at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. http://www.greghewettwriter.com/
Bruce Holsapple works as a Speech-Language Pathologist in Magdalena, NM. He’s published six books of poetry to date. His most recent book is Vanishing Act (La Alameda 2010). An interview with Jefferson Hansen on Vanishing Act appears at Experimental Fiction Poetry.
Poet, essayist, anthologist & translator Pierre Joris’ most recent publications are a translation, The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials by Paul Celan, the poem sequence Canto Diurno #4: The Tang Extending from the Blade, Justifying the Margins: Essays 1990-2006 & Aljibar I & II (poems). A gathering of essays on Joris’ poetry & translations, edited by Peter Cockelbergh under the title Pierre Joris: Topographies of the In-between, has just been published by Literaria Pragensia. With Habib Tengour he edited Poems for the Millennium, volume 4: The University of California Book of North African Literature, to be published in late 2012 by University of California Press.
Born in 1980, Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Latehomecomer, is the co-founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang also co-hosts a weekly radio program focusing on the Hmong community and has recently released The Place Where We Were Born, a film documenting the experiences of Hmong American refugees. http://www.kaokaliayang.com/
Gail Lukasik Gail Lukasik is the author of the Leigh Girard mystery series, which is set in the resort community of Door County, Wisconsin. Kirkus Reviews described Death’s Door, the second book in the series, “as fast-paced and literate, with a strong protagonist and a puzzle that keeps you guessing.” Her first stand-alone mystery/thriller, The Lost Artist, will be out this June. Before settling on writing mysteries, she was a ballerina for the Cleveland Civic Ballet and a published poet. Her website is: www.gaillukasik.com
Poet and novelist Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He received a B.A. degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.His books of poetry include Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), which won the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry; Whatsaid Serif (1998); Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (1994); School of Udhra (1993); Outlantish (1992); Eroding Witness (1985), which was selected for the National Poetry Series; Septet for the End of Time (1983); and Four for Trane (1978). He is also the author of an ongoing prose work, From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, of which four volumes have been published: Atet A. D. (2001), Djbot Baghostus's Run (1993), Bedouin Hornbook (1986), and Bass Cathedral (2008). Also a critic and literary theorist, Mackey is the author of Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (1993). He is the editor of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century (2000, with Carolyn Kizer, John Hollander, Robert Hass, and Marjorie Perloff) and Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (1993, with Art Lange). He also edits the magazine Hambone. In 1995, Strick: Song of the Andoumboulou 16-25, a compact disc recording of poems read with musical accompaniment, was released. Nathaniel Mackey is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. See more Nathaniel Mackey YouTube videos.
Sheila E. Murphy's book American Ghazals will appear this year from Otoliths Press (Qld, Australia). In addition, Continuations 2, the second volume of Murphy's collaborative poem sequence with Douglas Barbour, is due this spring from the University of Alberta Press. The Press bought out the first volume of this work in 2006. Murphy lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where she actively consults, researches, teaches, writes, and draws. She was reared in a home filled with music, and her first training was on flute performance.
Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the DC area, Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco where she earned an MFA. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry including As Long As Trees Last (forthcoming from Wave Book in the fall of 2012), Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey Press, 2009) and Your Ancient See Through (Subpress 2002). Her poetry has been collected in eight anthologies, including Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sound: The Teachers of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose, City Lights 2009, The Best of Fence, Fence Books 2009, For the Time Being: A Bootstrap Anthology, Bootstrap Books 2008, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry, Milkweed Editions 2008 and Not for Mothers Only, Fence Books 2007. With the poet Dale Smith, Nguyen founded a small press journal of poetry and poetics, publishing contemporary poets such as Amiri Baraka, Alice Notley, Linh Dinh, Kenward Elmslie and Eileen Myles. Nationally distributed, Skanky Possum has received attention from national media such as The Baltimore Sun and Poets and Writers. In 2002, as editor of Best American Poetry, Robert Creeley selected poems by four poets that were published in issue 6 of Skanky Possum. Skanky Possum’s catalogue has been collected by several prominent archives and Special Collections including San Francisco University, SUNY-Buffalo, University of Arizona’s Poetry Center, and the New York Public Library.
M.E. Parker is an obscure American fiction writer. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Camera Obscura Journal http://www.meparker.com
Nicole Peyrafitte is a a Gasco-Rican performance artist born and raised in the French Pyrenees and currently a resident of Brooklyn's Bay Ridge. Peyrafitte pursues related multi-cultural and multimedia investigations that integrate her voice, texts, visuals and also cooking. She has two CDs out: The Bi-Continental Chowder /La Garbure Transcontinentale (2006) & Whisk! Don’t Churn! (2009). Her latest projects are: “Bi-Valve” a series of texts & paintings addressing vulvic space & vulvic knowledge & “Basil King: MIRAGE” a film she is co-directing with Miles Joris-Peyrafitte on painter/poet Basil King. Visit her website for blog/videos and more: www.nicolepeyrafitte.com.
Nick Piombino is a poet and psychoanalyst who published, most recently, with collages by Toni Simon, Contradicta (Green Integer). Article on Nick Piombino in M/E/A/N/I/N/G.
Purgatory Hill can be checked out at purgatoryhill.com. Guitarist and singer Pat MacDonald is best known for his mid-80's top-ten hit "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades."
Susan M. Schultz’s pieces come from http://tinfisheditor.blogspot.com and are part of a second volume of Dementia Blog (Singing Horse Press, 2008), for which she is seeking a publisher.
Steve Sharp is a leading blues journalist and critic. His articles appear regularly in Living Blues. His latest profiles Johnny Winter.
Larissa Shmailo's work has appeared in Gargoyle, Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, Fulcrum,The Unbearables Big Book of Sex, and the Penguin anthology Words for the Wedding. Her books of poetry are In Paran (BlazeVOX [books]), A Cure for Suicide (Cervena Barva Press), and Fib Sequence (Argotist Ebooks); her poetry CDs are The No-Net World and Exorcism, available through iTunes and other digital distributors. Her translation of A. Kruchenych's Victory over the Sun is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press and is currently featured on the Brooklyn Rail InTranslation Web site.
Spencer Selby was born and raised in the Midwest. Studied political science and psychology and at The University of Iowa. In San Francisco started SINK Press, and coordinated The Canessa Park Reading Series from 1987-93. In 1993 created The List of Experimental Poetry/Art Magazines. Available on the web at www.selbyslist.com, the list has become an important source of info for innovative writers and artists around the world. His poetry books include Instar (San Francisco: SINK Press, 1989), Barricade (Providence: Paradigm Press, 1990), House of Before (Hartford: Potes and Poets, 1991), Sound Off (St. Paul: Detour, 1993), No Island (NY: Drogue Press, 1995), The Big R (NY: Angle Press, 1998), Task (Tenerife: Zasterle, 1999), Twist of Address (Exeter, England: Shearsman Books, 2007). Spencer Selby's Art Site & Ames Alt Research—Spencer Selby's Blog
Sun Yung Shin's first full-length collection of poems, Skirt Full of Black, was published by Coffee House Press and was awarded the Asian American Literary Award for Poetry in 2008. Her second book of poems, Rough, and Savage, also from Coffee House Press, is forthcoming in fall of 2012. She is a co-editor of the anthology Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption published in 2006 by South End Press; later this year KoRoot Press in Seoul will publish a Korean language edition. Shin is also the author of Cooper's Lesson, a bilingual Korean/English illustrated book for children published in 2004 by Children's Book Press.
Felino A. Soriano is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. Recent poetry collections include Intentions of Aligned Demarcations (Desperanto, 2011), Pathos etched, recalled: (white sky books, 2011), and Divaricated, Spatial Aggregates (limit cycle press, 2011). He edits and publishes the online journal, Counterexample Poetics. For information regarding his published works, editorships, and interviews, please visit: www.felinoasoriano.info. "Regarding the interaction with music, in creating my work," he writes, "jazz is at the foundation of movement. The white space employed in the poems is a component of spatial creation I hear within each recording of which I am listening. These particular poems were written when listening to various recordings from the late Sam Rivers." Find me on Twitter and Facebook. Personal website: Felino A. Soriano | Poet of Philosophy and Jazz Coöccurrence. Founder, Publisher Counterexample Poetics . Founder, Publisher Differentia Press . Contributing editor, Sugar Mule.
Oscar Sparrow was born in Winchester UK in 1949, apparently thanks to the American Marshal Aid programme to re-build Europe after the war. As the colour red leached its way out of the map of the British Empire, Oscar attended a die-hard Church school designed to create noble savages to serve what was left of the savage Nobles. The Eleven Plus exam revealed that he could not even count to eleven and he became a mechanic, labourer, truck driver, boxer and poet. He read Wordsworth and Ford Cortina manuals in a lorry cab near both Oxford and Cambridge universities. He married a kind forgiving woman who eventually forgave herself for that one big mistake. He has several wonderful children and hopes that one day they will all meet. At the age of 25 he heard the music of Edith Piaf and learned to sing all her songs. A few years later he realised she was French and that he was an ugly swan not a beautiful duckling. The shock propelled him to London where he joined the Metropolitan Police. Car chases and riots followed but he did not take it personally. He spent his spare time touring the Art galleries, singing Piaf and learning Italian. Eventually The Authorities fell for the con and gave him a desk job in the Art department of Interpol London at Scotland Yard. One day a few years later, the lure of the wild swept him away to the roads of Europe as road gipsy trucker. His love of fried battered fish eventually drew him back to England where he drove sewage tankers and set up a taxi business. Throughout all this time he was a would-be poet, short story writer and novelist.
Habib Tengour, poet and anthropologist, born 1947 in Mostaganem (Algeria), lives and works between Constantine & Paris. Considered as one of the Maghreb’s most forceful and visionary poetic voices of the post-colonial era, Tengour, who authored a “Manifesto of Maghrebian Surrealism” in 1981, explores the Algerian cultural space in all its ramifications — the oral & hagiographic traditions, the popular imagination & the founding myths, collective memory, raï music & the lived experiences of exile — in some 8 books of prose & 12 collections of poetry to date. He also translates from English (P. Joris) & from Arabic (Saadi Youssef, Chawki Abdelamir) & has just completed the anthology Poems for the Millennium, volume 4: The University of California Book of North African Literature, in collaboration with Pierre Joris. The piece that appears here will appear in Exile is my Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader, edited & translated by Pierre Joris. Black Widow Press, Boston 2012.
Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a novel, The Quarry and The Lot (2011), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). He teaches at California State University San Marcos.
Wang Ping was born in Shanghai and grew up on a small island in the East China Sea. After three years of farming in a mountain village, she attended Beijing University. In 1985 she left China to study in the U.S., earning her Ph.D. from New York University. She is the acclaimed author of the short story collection American Visa, the novel Foreign Devil, the poetry collection Of Flesh & Spirit, the cultural study Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China, and The Magic Whip, a second collection of poetry. Wang is also the editor and co-translator of the anthology New Generation: Poetry from China Today, and her writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 1993 and 1996. She is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and in 2003, the Loft Career Initiative and Bush Foundation. The Magic Whip was a 2004 finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and received an honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, and Aching for Beauty was a 2001 Minnesota Book Award finalist and winner of the University of Colorado's Eugene M. Kayden Book Award for "the best book in the humanities published by an American university press." Recipient of the Loft Literary Center 2009 McKnight Artist Fellowship Award for Writers and winner of the 2008 Minnesota Book Awards and the 2007 Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. She now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and teaches at Macalester College. Wang Ping web page.