Jeffrey Allen is the author of Simple Universal (Bronze Man Books, 2007). He holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago, where he now works and teaches. His poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, CutBank, H_NGM_N, Another Chicago Magazine, Forklift Ohio and Clementine. He is the Poetry Editor of phantom limb, an online poetry magazine.
Joe Bonomo's collection of essays This Must Be Where My Obsession With Infinity Began won the Orphan Press Creative Nonfiction Book Award and will be published by Orphan Press in 2013. His books include Conversations With Greil Marcus (editor), AC/DC's Highway to Hell, Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, Installations, and Sweat: The Story of The Fleshtones, America's Garage Band. Born and raised in suburban Washington D.C., he lives in DeKalb, Illinois and is an Assistant Professor of English at Northern Illinois University. He appears online at No Such Thing As Was (www.nosuchthingaswas.com).
John Dalton is the author of the novel, Heaven Lake, winner of the Barnes and Noble 2004 Discover Award in fiction and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His second novel, The Inverted Forest, was published in 2011 and selected as a best book of the year by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Wall Street Journal - Book Lover. John is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He directs the MFA Program at the University of Missouri - St. Louis.
Lucas Hirsch (1975) is the author of two collections of poems, ‘familie gebiedt’ (De Arbeiderspers, 2006) and ‘tastzin’ (De Arbeiderspers, 2009). Hirsch published his poems in (several) Dutch, Belgian and American magazines and performed on stages in The Netherlands, Belgium and the USA. In 2009 Lucas Hirsch was special guest at the world famous The Green Mill Jazz & Poetry Club in Chicago. Lucas is also a literary agent for the Flemish magazine DWB. In 2007, Lucas founded a small literary production company called ‘Kleine Revolutie Producties,’ with which he organizes literary events around Haarlem. He likes to have his writers and poets to perform at odd places and in combination with soundscapes, singer songwriters and jazz musicians. Next to the fact that he is living in Haarlem, The Netherlands, he loves to ride his skateboard and sometimes serves is a guest judge for poetry contests for young people. In May 2011 Lucas Hirsch was a guest at the Ledig House, international writers residency at Art Omi, New York. In April 2012 Lucas organized a trip to the US with his poetry foundation, The New York to Pittsburgh and Back Dutch Poetry Tour. In June 2012 Pleiades featured the poets that went on this trip. In September his third book of poetry will be published. Hirsch is working on a 4th book of poetry and his first novel.
Nils Michals is the author of Lure, which won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd award and was published by Pleiades and LSU Press in 2004. Recent work has appeared in Menacing Hedge, White Whale Review, Bombay Gin, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, and others. An article, “The Metaphysical Object: Rilke and Image in Letters on Cezanne”, recently appeared in AboutaWord. He currently teaches in Boulder at Front Range Community College and the University of Colorado.
Anna Moschovakis is the author of two books of poetry, You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake and I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, and the translator of several novels from the French, most recently The Jokers by Albert Cossery. She is a longtime member of the Brooklyn-based publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse.
Aubrey Ryan's work has appeared recently in Anti-, Quarterly West, Best New Poets 2011, Squat Birth Journal, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2012 Booth Poetry Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Aubrey recieved her MFA from Northern Michigan University where she served as associate poetry editor of Passages North. She lives in Iowa with her husband and toddling son.
Katie Schmid's work has been published in Quarterly West, Hot Metal Bridge, Event Magazine, Best New Poets 2009 and online at The Missouri Review Audio Blog. Her manuscript recently took second place in the Santa Fe Writer's Project Poetry Awards. She is a graduate of the University of Wyoming’s MFA program, where she won the University's Outstanding Thesis Award for 2011.