August 16, 2007

Oliver de la Paz teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. His work has appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, North American Review, and elsewhere. He has received many grants and awards, including a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. He is a cofounder of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to mentoring Asian American writers. Oliver’s book of prose and verse, Names Above Houses, was a winner of the 2000 Crab Orchard Award Series and was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2001. His second book, Furious Lullaby, will be published in September 2007. Oliver has a website at www.oliverdelapaz.com.

Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His first book, The Darker Fall, won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and was published by Sarabande Books in 2002. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including New England Review, The New Republic, Poetry, and Virginia Quarterly Review. His work has also appeared in many anthologies, including The New Young American Poets, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, and Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University. He lives in Tacoma, Washington and teaches both in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and Pacific Lutheran University. His second book, Want, will be published by Sarabande in early 2008.