Contributors

Pat Aakhus is the Director of International Studies and teaches creative writing at the University of Southern Indiana.  She also teaches courses in the history of magic and alchemy and has published three novels with Wolfhound Press in Dublin, Ireland, short stories and essays. Her essay “Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices” recently appeared in Back Home, an anthology of essays from Indiana writers.  She grew up in L.A., did a BA in theatre at the University of California Santa Cruz, and then an MFA at Vermont College in creative writing.

Meredy Amyx knew when she was six that she wanted to be a writer.  More than a hundred of her articles, essays, and stories have appeared in local and national Mensa publications and elsewhere.  She is working on a novel as well as various short fiction and nonfiction pieces, and she reads regularly at the South Bay Writers Club (SBWC) open mic in Campbell.  An editor by profession, she is currently employed in documentation at Cisco.  In 2006 she won the WritersTalk (SBWC newsletter) scholarship to the East of Eden writers' conference for her story “Brian.” Visit her website at www.metaphoricaldwelling.com.

Amy Bitterman has previously had short fiction accepted by The Cream City Review, The Crescent Review, The Literary Review, Folio, The G. W. Review, The William and Mary Review, and Kerem.  She currently teaches at Rutgers Law School.

Elaine David had traversed the concrete jungle that is Manila before choosing to relocate to the Bay Area for the purpose of dabbling in software development.  Having grown up in a bustling, eclectic sort of city has attracted Elaine to fiction wherein the chaotic nature of life is framed within pockets of stillness.

Carolyn Donnell is a member of the South Bay branch of the California Writers Club. Her poems have been published in Celtic Women (http://www.celticwomen.org) and WritersTalk. She was a 2006 contest winner, second place, in the SouthWest Writers Contest for her short story “Albuquerque Sky.” She is currently working on two novels, a play, and children's stories. Other passions include painting and playing viola with Stanford Savoyards, San Benito Stage orchestra, and other Bay Area groups. Her web page is at http://www.geocities.com/cdonnelltx.

Bob Evans began writing poetry in 1978 and started Waverley Writers in Palo Alto, California, while studying with Dick Maxwell.  After receiving his MFA from San Francisco State University in 1994, he taught briefly but soon returned to the way he has made his living since 1970 – as an arborist.  His work has been published in a number of small literary journals, including Avocet, Santa Clara Review, The Montserrat Review, and Blue Unicorn, where he won the annual contest in 2002. Dancing Aspen Press of Fairfax, California, has published two volumes of his poems.  He has a daughter named Phoebe who is a jeweler, artist, and dreamworker in Santa Cruz.

Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian-American poet and freelance writer living in Santa Cruz, California. She teaches writing at UC Santa Cruz.  Her work was recently included in the anthology Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, edited by Persis M. Karim (U. of Arkansas Press, 2006).

Kevin Ferguson toiled for five years in the blistering Las Vegas heat, reporting for various newspapers on politics, business and the occasional scam artist. He has also worked as a journalist in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he now lives. He is a board member of the California Writers Club and past chairman of the Jack London Writers Conference. He is a former vice president of the LEB branch of Toastmasters International at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

James Hanna wandered Australia for seven years before settling on a career in criminal justice.  He spent twenty years as a counselor in the Indiana Department of Correction and is presently a probation officer in San Francisco.  James' short stories have appeared in Old Crow Review, Sandhills Review  and Edge City Review.  Two of these stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  James has recently completed his second novel, The Farm.  It depicts a riot in an Indiana penal facility.  He is looking for an agent to represent this book.

Beth Houston has taught creative writing and English at several Florida universities and colleges since relocating to Florida from California in 2003.  She has published six poetry books and is hoping to find time soon to write a book of Florida sonnets.

Emily Jiang's poetry has won awards in several contests, including the Writer's Digest Competition, the Jack London Writing Contest, the Texas Poetry Society, and the Olympiad of the Arts Festival. She also writes fiction for young adults and children. Emily grew up in Dallas, Texas, and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

George Lober is a former winner of both the Spectrum Prize for Poetry and the Ruth Cable Memorial Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in a number of small literary journals, including Spectrum, Sage, Eclectic Literary Forum, Quarry West, Caesura, and the Monterey Poetry Review. His first book of poems, Shift of Light, was published by Hummingbird Press in 2002. He currently lives in Carmel, California.

Elaine McCreight was raised in Georgia and Louisiana and now lives with her husband in Menlo Park, California.  She’s a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and she participates regularly in Palo Alto’s Waverley Writers.  After completing an M.A. in English literature at the University of Michigan, Elaine taught for many years. She now writes, paints – and works to revise all manner of things.

Peggy Messerschmidt teaches English and creative writing at Mission College in Santa Clara.  Her academic background is in comparative literature (French, English, and German), and she continues to satisfy her interest in integrated learning by coordinating and teaching in the learning communities program at Mission.  She is a member of the Everything Poetry Poets group, based in Pleasanton, CA, and has published her work in the following journals:  Cape Rock, Mindworks, Sanskrit, Lynx Eye, RMPA Views, Crazy Child Scribbler, and a DACCA chapbook.  She also writes creative nonfiction and book reviews.

Elise Frances Miller has been an art critic and reviewer for several well-known publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Art News, The Reader, and San Diego Magazine, for which she wrote a monthly column. As the communications manager for student affairs at San Diego State University, she wrote, edited, and supervised production of over 200 projects each year. While at SDSU, she began writing short stories, made progress on two novels, and completed numerous workshops and several classes in fiction writing. She is the Communications Director for the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University. She attends critique sessions at the San Francisco Writer’s Workshop and is a new member of the California Writers Club, SF/Peninsula Branch. She is currently seeking a publisher for her completed novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones, a highly fictionalized account of her experiences in Paris during the May Revolution, 1968.

Charlotte Muse lives in Menlo Park, California, where she writes, teaches poetry, and teaches reading to Hispanic children.  She spends as much time as possible staring off into space, though she knows perfectly well that nobody pays you for doing that.

Jacqueline Mutz is a native Californian who teaches English composition and creative writing to a variety of students.  Currently, she lives in the South Bay with her husband and daughter and two kitties and writes poetry when her muse speaks loudly enough to spark a response .

Mary Petrosky holds an MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Calyx, Tattoo Highway, Kalliope,   the Metronome of Aptekarsky Ostrov, published in St. Petersburg, Russia, and previously in The Sand Hill Review. She has been a finalist in poetry competitions sponsored by Calyx, Kalliope, and Glimmer Train, among others. A freelance writer, Mary lives in San Mateo, CA, with her husband and two children.

Christine Ritz was born and raised in Southern California, moving to the Bay Area in 1991.  Besides writing poetry, she reads, gardens, bakes, and spends time with her sheltie and greyhound.

B. L. P. Simmons was born in St. Lucia, West Indies, studied in London, and now resides in California, USA.  She began writing poetry in 1990.  Her work has been published in The American Poetry Journal, Poui: The Cave Hill Literary Annual (University of the West Indies), Verse Daily, Cuts from the Barbershop, Fresh Hot Bread, and was an award winner of the Bay Area Poetry Coalition contest. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005.  She also writes in and translates from Spanish.  She aims to explore and express the mystery underlying the mundane.

Barbara Wilcox is a Web editor in San Francisco and participates in a poetry group that has met monthly at Stanford for several years.