» John Fowles Center Literary Forum Series

JONIS AGEE is a writer of short stories, novels, and screenplays. She was educated at The University of Iowa (BA) and The State University of New York at Binghamton (MA, PhD) Among her many awards are an NEA grant in Fiction, a Loft-McKnight Award, and a Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction. Three of her books were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her newest novel, The Weight of Dreams, won the Nebraska Book Award for 2000. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at The University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Published works include the novels South of Resurrection, Strange Angels, The Weight of Dreams, and Sweet Eyes; the poetry book Houses; and the short story collections Pretend We’ve Never Met, Bend This Heart, A .38 Special and a Broken Heart, Taking the Wall, and Acts of Love on Indigo Road.

RABIH ALAMEDDINE is a Lebanese-American painter and writer. He was born in 1959 to Lebanese Druz parents in Amman, Jordan, and grew up in Kuwait and Lebanon, which he left at age 17 to live first in England and then in California. He holds a degree in engineering from UCLA and a Master's of Business from San Francisco. His most recent novel has received critical acclaim and has been translated into ten languages. He lives in San Francisco and Beirut.

Published works include the novels Koolaids; I, the Divine; and The Hakawati; and the short story collection The Perv.

MARK AMERIKA is an internationally renowned "remix artist" who reconfigures existing cultural content into new forms and mashes up the mainstream media forms and genres most commercial artists work in. Amerika recently had four retrospective exhibitions of his digital art work in London, Bilbao, Tokyo, and Sao Paulo. He is presently a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Published works include the novels The Kafka Chronicles and Sexual Blood; and the short story collection How To Be An Internet Artist.

DAVID ANTIN is a poet, critic and performance artist. His background includes undergraduate work in science and languages with graduate work in linguistics at New York University, where his special project was the language structure of Gertrude Stein. A four month email exchange with the poet Charles Bernstein called A Conversation with David Antin was published by Granary Press in Spring 2002. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. He lives and works in San Diego, California.

Published works include the poetry books Definitions, Autobiography, Code of Flag Behavior, Meditations, Talking, After the War (A Long Novel with Few Words), Talking at the Boundaries, Who’s Listening Out There, Dialogue, Tuning, Poèmes Parlés, Selected Poems 1963-1973, What It Means to be Avant Garde, i never knew what time it was, and john cage uncaged is still cagey.

TONY ARDIZZONE is a Chicago native whose writing has received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the Chicago Foundation for Literature Award for Fiction sponsored by the Friends of Literature, the Pushcart Prize, the Virginia Prize for Fiction, the Lawrence Foundation Award, the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize, two individual artist fellowships in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts, and other honors. In 2006 he was named Chancellor’s Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he teaches courses in creative writing, 20th century American fiction, ethnic American literature, and literary interpretation, and where he has twice served terms as director of the creative writing program. He has also served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and was the recipient of Indiana University’s Tracy M. Sonneborn Award, given annually to a faculty member for exemplary teaching.

Published works include the novels The Whale Chaser, In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, The Evening News, The Heart of the Order, and In the Name of the Father; and the short story collections Taking It Home: Stories from the Neighborhood, and Larabi's Ox: Stories of Morocco.

JOHN ASHBERY has won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976. His work is still controversial and renowned for postmodern complexity and opacity. Some critics have compared him to T.S. Eliot in his breadth of influence. Ashbery currently lives in New York City and Hudson, New York.

Published works include the poetry books Turadot and Other Poems; Some Trees, which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize; The Tennis Court Oath; Rivers and Mountains; The Double Dream of Spring; Three Poems; The Vermont Notebook; Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Houseboat Days; As We Know; Shadow Train; A Wave, which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the Bollingen Prize; April Galleons; Flow Chart; Hotel Lautreamont; And the Stars Were Shining; Can You Hear, Bird?; Wakefulness; Girls on the Run; Your Name Here; and As Umbrellas Follow Rain.

WILLIS BARNSTONE has numerous publications of poetry, books of literary criticism, and translations. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the recipient of NEH and NEA awards. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1960, and has won numerous other awards and distinctions. He is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. His appearance was co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

Published works include the poetry books Poems of Exchange, From This White Island, Antijournal, A Day in the Country, New Faces of China, China Poems, Stickball on 88th Street, Overheard, A Snow Salmon Reached the Andes Lake, Ten Gospels and a Nightingale, The Alphabet of Night, Five A.M. in Beijing, Funny Ways of Staying Alive, The Secret Reader, Algebra of Night, and Life Watch; the critical books entitled Borges at Eight: Conversations, The Poetics of Ecstasy: from Sappho to Borges, and The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice; and the memoirs From Hawthorne's Gloom to a Whitewashed Island, With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires, Sunday Morning in Fascist Spain, and We Jews and Blacks: Memoir with Poems.

CHARLES BERNSTEIN was the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, Director of the Poetics Program, and S.U.N.Y Distinguished Professor at S.U.N.Y-Buffalo. His awards include: New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship (1995, 1990), Guggenheim Fellowship (1985), and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship (1980). He is presently a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Published works include the essays entitled Artifice of Absorption, A Conversation with David Antin, Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984, A Poetics, and My Way: Speeches and Poems; and the poetry books Asylums, Parsing, Shade, Poetic Justice, L E G E N D, Controlling Interests, The Nude Formalism, Islets/Irritations, The Sophist, Rough Trades, Dark City, Republics of Reality: 1975-1995, and With Strings.

RALPH M. BERRY is the author of novels, short stories, and essays. A native of Atlanta, GA, he attended Young Harris College, Furman University, and Wesley Theological Seminary at American University and received an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. Since 1985 he has been on the faculty of the English Department at Florida State University, where he specializes in 20th Century Literature and Critical Theory. In 2006 he became Chair of the Department. From 1999 through 2007 he served as publisher of Fiction Collective Two (FC2). Berry's essays on philosophy and experimental fiction have appeared in Symploke, Soundings, Narrative, Philosophy and Literature, and Contex, and in such books as Ordinary Language Criticism: Literary Thinking After Cavell After Wittgenstein and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature, edited by Richard Eldridge.

Published works include Frank and Leonardo's Horse; and the short story collections Plane Geometry & Other Affairs of the Heart, which won the 1985 Fiction Collective Prize; and Dictionary of Modern Anguish; the co-edited essay collection entitled Fiction's Present: Situating Contemporary Narrative Innovation; and the singularly edited anthology Forms at War: FC2 1999-2009.

ALICIA BORINSKY, born in Buenos Aires, is a novelist, poet, and literary critic. She serves as the professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature and the Director of the Writing in the Americas Program at Boston University. her critical work has helped frame the discussion about writers of the "boom" movement in Latin America. Among her other scholarly achievements is the introduction of the figure of Macedonio Fernandez, Borges's master, the exploration of the intersection between literary theory, cultural and gender studies, and numerous works about poetry, Latino writers and World literature.

Published works include the books La ventrilocua y otras canciones, Epistolario de Macedonio Fernandez, Ver/Ser Visto: Notas para una nalitica poetica, Intersticios: estudios criticos de literatura hispana, Mujeres timidas y la Venus de China (Timorous Women), Macedonio Fernandez y la teoria critica, Mina cruel (Mean Woman), Theoretical Fables: The Pedagogical Dream in Latin-American Fiction, La pareja desmontable, Suenos del seductor abandonado (Dreams of the Abandoned Seducer), Madres Alquiladas, Cine Continuado (All Night Movie), Golpes bajos (Low Blows), La pareja desmontable (The Collapsible Couple), La mujer de mi marido, Las ciudades perdidas van al paraiso, and Frivolas y pecadoras.

CARMEN BOULLOSA is a leading Mexican poet, novelist, and playwright. her work generally focuses on the issues of feminism and gender roles within a Latin American context. She has won a number of awards for her works and has taught at universities such as Georgetown University, Columbia University, and New York University, as well as at universities in nearly a dozen other countries. She is currently a Distinguished Lecturer at the City College of New York.

Published works include the novels Son vacas, somos puercos (They're Cows, We're Pigs); La milagrosa; and Duerme; poetry book Otono 30; the short story collection Saint Teresa Visits Beth Israel; and the compilation Teatro heretico, consisting of three plays.

Published works include the novels Son vacas, somos puercos (They're Cows, We're Pigs); La milagrosa; and Duerme; poetry book Otono 30; the short story collection Saint Teresa Visits Beth Israel; and the compilation Teatro heretico, consisting of three plays.

Published works include the poetry books L’Ultimo aprile bianco (The Last White April); L’Oceano e il Ragazzo; and Le stagioni (The Seasons), which won the Montale Prize; the novels Il terzo ufficiale (The Third Officer In Command), which won the Hemingway Prize; and La casa delle onde (The House of the Waves), selected by the Strega Prize; the essay entitled L’adultera, (The Adulteress), which won the Manzoni Prize; the anthologies La lirica d’Occidente (Western Lyric Poetry) and La poesia del mondo (The poetry of the World); and the travel book Terre del mito (Lands of myth).

HIBER CONTERIS is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona, teaching Latin American Political Ideologies and Geopolitics of Southern Cone Countries at the Center for Latin American Studies. He hopes to retire and return to his home country, Uruguay.

Published works include the novels Cono Sur, Vila Anastacio, Virginia en Flashback, El nadador, La Diana el crepusculo, El diez pro ciento de vida (Ten Percent of Life), El breve verano de Nefertiti, Round Trip: Viaje Regresivo; and The Trace of the Serpent.

Published works include Stovepiper Book One, Valley, Gagaku Meat: The Steve Richmond Story, and Alarm.

ERRI DE LUCA is an Italian novelist, translator, and poet. He has been called the "writer of the decade" by the Correiere della Sera. He is self-taught in several languages including Ancient Hebrew and Yiddish. His work has been translated and published in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, Holland, the United States, Brazil, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Romania, Greece, Lithuania, and more. He has himself translated several books of the Bible into Italian and explored various aspects of Judaism as a non-believer. In France, he received the France Culture Prize in 1994, the Laure Batallion Award in 2002, and the Feminia Etranger award in 2002. In 2010 he was given the German international literacy Petrarca-Preis. He also writes regularly for various newspapers and magazines.

Published works include Non ora, non qui; Una nuvola come tappeto; Aceto, Arco baleno; I colpi dei sensi; Prove di riposta; In alto a sinistra; Pianoterra; Alzaia; Ora prima; Tu, mio; Tre cavalli; Montedidio; Nocciolo d'oliva; Il contrario di uno; In nome della madre; Sulla traccia di Nives; Tentativi di scouraggiamento a darsi alla scrittura (Attempts at Discouragement When Taking Up Writing); Il giorno prima della felicita; Il peso della farfalla; Tu non c'eri; and E disse; and the poetry book Opera sull'acqua e altre poesie.

JEFFREY DESHELL is a novelist and literary critic who holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Ph.D. from the Statue University of New York at Buffalo. He was a Fulbright Teaching Fellow in Budapest, Hungary from 1999-2000. He currently teaches fiction writing and literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is on the faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. He also serves as co-editor of the Fiction Collective Two.

Published works include the novels S&M and In Heaven Everything is Fine; and the co-edited short story collections entitled Chick-Lit I: Post-feminist Fiction and Chick-Lit II: No Chick Vics; and the critical work The Peculiarity of Literature: An Allegorical Approach to Poe’s Fiction.

JOHN DIAMOND-NIGH is a sculptor, designer and poet. His sculpture has been included in exhibitions at the Minnesota Institute of Art, Yale University Art Museum and the Smithsonian. As a poet, he recently collaborated with Japanese composer Yoshi Kunimoto, resulting in a concert/readingfrom which a CD was produced. John’s poems have appeared in Paris Review, The Malahat Review, Gettysburg Review and Barrow Street. John is particularly interested in fusing his poetry and sculpture, the latter often inscribed with text, and the former exploring frameworks of space, book and architecture. He has collaborated with the French new novelist, Michel Butor, on a project and is currently collaborating with Mark Axelrod on the Projet Serviette. John lives with his wife in upstate New York, where both teach at Elmira College. Each spring they live and teach in Paris.

Published works include the poetry book Labyrinth.

FRANCESCA DURANTI is known as one of the most laconic of Italian writers. She was born in Genoa and studied in Rome and Pisa. Major awards include the Premio Bagutta, Premio Basilicata, Premio Hemingway, Premio Super-Campiello, Premio Rapallo (twice) and others. She splits her time between Lucca and New York. Photograph by Stefano Baroni.

Published works include the novels La Bambina, Piazza mia bella piazza, La casa sul lago della luna (The House on Moon Lake), Lieto Fine (Happy Ending), Effetti Personali (Personal Effects), Ultima Stesura, Progetto Burlamacchi, Sogni Mancini (Left handed dreams), Canaria, and Un anno senza canzoni.

RAYMOND FEDERMAN has been a prolific novelist, poet, critic and translator. His awards include Guggenheim, Camargo, Fulbright, NEA and Berlin Kunstler Fellowships. In 1990, Federman was promoted to the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor, and in 1994, he was appointed to the Melodia E. Jones Chair of Literature. He was recently honored with a special edition of the Journal of Experimental Fiction 23 titled, The Laugh that Laughs at the Laugh. He taught a Master Class in Creative Writing during the Spring 2004 semester and his appearance was co-sponsored by the Department of English and Comparative Literature.

Published works include the poetry books Among the Beasts, Me Too, Duel/Duel, and Now Then; and the novels Double or Nothing, winner of the Frances Steloff Fiction Prize and The Panache Experimental Fiction Prize; Amer Eldorado, nominated for Le Prix Medicis; Take It or Leave It; The Voice in the Closet; The Twofold Vibration; Smiles on Washington Square, which won The American Book Award; To Whom It May Concern; and La Fourrure de ma Tante Rachel.

RYAN GATTIS was born in Illinois and raised in Colorado Springs, CO. He now lives in East London and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. He earned his M.A. degree in Creative Writing Prose from the University of East Anglia and is a Chapman University alumnus, receiving his B.F.A. in Creative Writing in 2001. His debut novel received “full marks for panache, black humour and staying power” from The Guardian. He has now finished his second novel, which is an excruciating take on American high school violence.

Published works include the novels Roo Kickick & The Big Bad Blimp and Kung Fu High School.

ECKHARD GERDES earned an M.F.A. in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His fiction has appeared in many literary journals, and he regularly reviews books for The Review of Contemporary Fiction and The Hyde Park Review of Books. He is editor of The Journal of Experimental Fiction series of books. He has twice been the recipient of the Richard Pike Bissell Creative Writing Award, is listed in Contemporary Authors, 2000 Outstanding Writers of the 20th Century, International Authors and Writers Who's Who, and Who's Who in Writers, Editors, and Poets, and is a member of the board of advisors for CONTEXT: A Forum for Literary Arts and Culture. He teaches Creative Writing and English at Macon State College in Georgia.

Published works include the novels Projections, Truly Fine Citizen, Ring in a River, Cistern Tawdry and Przewalski’s Horse; and a collection of three novellas due from Six Gallery Press.

ASSAF GAVRON is a novelist and translator whose own works have been translated into German, Russian, Italian, French, English, Dutch, Greek, and Bulgarian. Among the many prizes he has won are the Israeli Prime Minister's Creative Award for Authors, the Israeli Geffen award, and the DAAD artists-in-Berlin fellowship in Germany. His fiction has been adapted for the stage for Israel's national theatre, and three of his novels were optioned for movies by Israeli and international film produces. He was the chief writer of the prize-winning computer game Peacemaker; and has contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines. He is also the singer and main songwriter of the cult pop group The Foot and Mouth.

Published works include the novels Ice, Moving, Almost Dead/CrocAttack, and Hydromania; and the short story collections Ototo and Sex in the Cemetery; and a non-fiction collection of Jerusalem falafel-joint reviews entitled Eating Standing Up.

Zulfikar A Ghose is a novelist, poet and essayist. A native of Pakistan who has long lived in Texas, he writes in the surrealist mode of much Latin American fiction, blending fantasy and harsh realism. Ghose grew up a Muslim in Sialkot and in largely Hindu Bombay (Mumbai), then moved with his family to England. He graduated from Keele (England) University in 1959 and married Helena de la Fontaine, an artist from Brazil (a country he later used as the setting for six of his novels). His first novel, The Contradictions (1966), explores differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life. In The Murder of Aziz Khan (1967) a small farmer tries to save his traditional land from greedy developers. Ghose’s trilogy The Incredible Brazilian, comprising The Native (1972), The Beautiful Empire (1975), and A Different World (1978), presents the picaresque adventures, often violent or sexually perverse, of a man who goes through several reincarnations. Ghose’s other novels include Crump’s Terms (1975), A New History of Torments (1982), and The Triple Mirror of the Self (1992) among others. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Texas-Austin.

PAOLO GIORDANO is an Italian writer and professional physicist. His first novel sold over a million copies and was translated into thirty languages; an Italian language film based on the novel was released in September 2010. He also won the Premio Strega literary award.

Published works include La solitudine dei numeri primi (The Solitude of Prime Numbers).

RICHARD GROSSMAN is an award-winning novelist and poet. Born in Lubbock, TX and raised in Minneapolis, Grossman received a B.A. in English Literature from Stanford University in 1965. After working as a high-level executive for a multinational financial services company, he left the corporate world to devote his time to writing. For the past two decades Grossman has been concentrating on a trilogy of novels intended to redefine the nature of writing; works of art in a variety of media including sculptures, installations, videos, photographs, music, and theatrical performances are being produced by Grossman as part of the project. his poetry has appeared in over a hundred publications. Grossman and his wife currently live in Los Angeles, CA and Makaweli, HI.

Published works include the poetry books Tycoon Boy and The Animals; and the trilogy American Letters, including the novels The Alphabet Man, The Book of Lazarus, and Breeze Avenue, which will be launched online.

JEFF GUNDY’s earlier books include four chapbooks. His awards include the Ohio Arts Council Fellowship, Pushcart Prize nominations, C. Henry Smith Peace Lectureships, and a fellowship to the 1995 White River Writers’ Workshop. He graduated from Goshen College with a degree in English, and did masters work in creative writing and a earned a doctorate in American literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. He currently teaches at Bluffton College, where he is Professor of English.

Published works include the poetry books Inquiries; Flatlands; Rhapsody with Dark Matter; and Deerflies, the winner of the 2003 Editions Poetry Prize from WordTech Editions; and the nonfiction book entitled Walker in the Fog: On Mennonite Writing.

AMIR GUTFREUND was born in Haifa in 1963 and now lives in Galilee. After studying applied mathematics at the Technion, he joined the Israeli Air Force where he works in mathematical research. He has received a number of prizes for his literary work, including the Sapir Prize in 2003, the Book Publisher's Associations' Book Prize in 2006, and the Rohr Choice Award in 2007.

Published works include the novels Our Holocaust; The World, a Little Later; and When Heroes Fly; and the short story collection The Shoreline Mansions.

SEAN KEITH HENRY was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and grew up in Boston, MA. He received his B.A. in English from Chapman and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. He lived for four years in Norway and now resides in Southern California with his wife and two children. His stories have been published in the journals Obsidian II, Salamander and Callaloo. His debut novel is the powerful and disturbing story of a man's cultural isolation and displacement when he and his family migrate from the multicultural mecca of Los Angeles, to Trondheim, a small, homogenous city hidden between fjords in the middle of Norway.

Published works include the novel Limbo.

ANDY HORTON is an award-winning screenwriter and author of fifteen books on film, screenwriting, and culture. He is the Jeanne H Smith Professor of Film and Video Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He has given screenwriting workshops around the world including in Norway, Germany, England, the Czech Republic, Greece, New Zealand, Switzerland, and throughout the United States.

Published works include the critical texts The Films of George Roy Hill; Modern European Filmmakers & the Art of Adaptation; Soviet Film Satire; Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay; the Last Modernist; Laughing Out Loud; Screenwriting for a Global Market: Selling Your Scripts from Hollywood to Hong Kong; Henry Bumstead and the World of Hollywood Art Direction; The Films of Theo Angelopoulos; Ernie Kovacs & Early TV Comedy: Nothing in Moderation; The Zero Hour; Three More Screenplays by Preston Sturges; Comedy/Cinema/Theory, Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., Play it Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes;and the films Virginia, The Dark Side of the Sun, Something In Between, and The Great American Foot Race.

FANNY HOWE is the recipient of the 2002 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; she has also won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Council for the Arts and the Village Voice and, most recently, from the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as winning fellowships from the Bunting Institute and the MacArthur Colony. Howe has lectured at Tufts University, Emerson College, Columbia University, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is Professor Emerita of Writing and Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Published works include poetry books Gone: Poems, Selected Poems, Forged, One Crossed Out, O’Clock, The End, For Erato, The Meaning of Life, Alsace-Lorraine and Poem from a Single Pallet.

HAROLD JAFFE's fiction has appeared in such journals as Mississippi Review; City Lights Review; Paris Review; New Directions in Prose and Poetry; Chicago Review; Chelsea; Fiction; Central Park; Witness; Black Ice; Minnesota Review; Boundary 2; ACM; Black Warrior Review; Cream City Review; Two Girls' Review; and New Novel Review. His fictions have also been anthologized in Pushcart Prize; Best American Stories; Best of American Humor; Storming the Reality Studio; American Made; Avant Pop: Fiction for a Daydreaming Nation; After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology; Bateria and Am Lit; Borderlands; Praz; Positive; and elsewhere. His novels and stories have been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian. He has won two NEA grants in fiction, two Fulbright fellowships, a New York CAPS grant, a California Arts Council fellowship in fiction, a San Diego fellowship (COMBO) in fiction, and three Pushcart Prizes in fiction. Currently, he teaches literature at San Diego State University and is editor of Fiction International.

Published works include the novels Othello Blues, Straight Razor: Stories, Eros Anti-Eros, Madonna & Other Spectacles, Dos Indios, and Mole's Pity; the short story collections Beasts, and Mourning Crazy Horse; and the non-fiction work entitled Beyond the Techno-Cave: A Guerilla Writer's Guide to Post-Millennial Culture

MARILYN KALLETT's poems have appeared recently in New Letters, Prairie Schooner, and Tar River Poetry, among other magazines. She has won the Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Fellowship in Poetry and was a YWCA Outstanding Woman in the Arts in 2000. Kallet is the poetry editor for New Millennium Writings and is currently professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Published works include the poetry books How to Get Heat Without Fire, Lure, and The Art of College Teaching: 27 Takes.

STEVE KATZ was born in May of 1935, and that’s all there is to it. He is a prolific writer, and his latest work, a triad, is sexier than a hockey rink blanketed with doorknobs, warm as all humanity hovering in helicopters above the volcanic rift, is a brand new look at the art of narrative, and an heroic assessment of our times. He’s currently a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Published works include the novels The Exaggerations of Peter Prince; The Lestriad; Moving Parts, Stolen Stories; Wier & Pouce; Florry of Washington Heights; and Swanny’s Ways.

ELIAS KHOURY is a Lebanese novelist, playwright, and critic. His ten novels have been translated into several foreign languages, as have several of his literary criticism works. He has taught in Columbia University, New York, in the American University of Beirut, the Lebanese University, the Lebanese American University and New York University.

Published works include the novels 'an 'ilaqat al-da'irah, The Little Mountain, The Gates of the City, White Masks', The Journey of Little Gandhi, The Kingdom of Strangers, Majma' al-Asrar, Gate of the Sun, Ra'ihat al-Sabun, Yalo, and As Though She Were Sleeping; the short story collection Al-mubtada' wa'l-khabar; and the critical texts Dirasat fi naqd al-shi'r, Al-dhakira al-mafquda, Tajirbat al-ba'th 'an ufq, Zaman al-ihtilal.

Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United States. She has contributed to the feminist movement with such works as her memoir The Woman Warrior, which discusses gender and ethnicity and how these concepts affect the lives of women. Kingston has received several awards for her contributions to Chinese American Literature including the National Book Award in 1981 for her novel China Men. Other awards include: General Nonfiction Award: National Book Critics Circle for The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, 1976; Anisfield-Wolf Race Relations Award, 1978; National Endowment for the Arts Writers Award, 1980; National Book Award for General Nonfiction for China Men, 1981; National Endowment for the Arts Writers Award, 1982’; PEN West Award in fiction for Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, 1989; Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Literary Awards, 2006; Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, 2008

ALICIA KOZAMEH studied philosophy and literature at the University of Rosario and at the University of Buenos Aires. Her studies were interrupted while she was detained as a political prisoner during Argentina's most recent military dictatorship. After her release, she continued to suffer constant repression and persecution, and was forced to go into exile in 1980, first in California, and later in Mexico. She returned to Argentina in 1984, after the Falklands War and the return of democratic elections to her country. As a consequence of the publication of Pasos bajo el agua in 1987, Kozameh was threatened by members of the Argentine political police. She returned to California for her family's safety in 1988. Since then, she has been invited by Amnesty International to participate in panel discussions and speak at conferences about her literary works and experiences as a political prisoner. She is frequently invited to give readings and lectures at literary conferences and at special presentations organized by Departments of Languages and Literature throughout the United States, Latin America and Europe. She currently teaches creative writing full-time at Chapman University.

Published works include the novels Pasos bajo el agua (Steps Under Water); 259 saltos, uno immortal (259 Leaps, the Last Immortal; Patas de avestruz; Basse danse; the short story collection Ofrenda de propia piel; and the poetry book Mano en vuelo.

Andrew Lam is a Vietnamese American writer. He was born in South Vietnam, where he led a privileged life as the son of General Lâm Quang Thi of the Army of the Republic of Vietname attended the University of California, Berkeley where he majored in biochemistry. He is currently the web editor of New America Media. Lam is the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." He is also a senior editor and writer at New America Media and for a period of 8 years, a commentator on NPR's All Things Considered. His next book, "Birds of Paradise" - a collection of short stories - will be published in 2013. He lives in San Francisco, California.

MICHELINE AHARONIAN MARCOM was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1968 to an American father and an Armenian-Lebanese mother. She grew up in Los Angeles, but, as a child in the years before the Lebanese Civil War, she spent summers in Beirut with her mother's family. Her second book in the trilogy earned her the 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship as well as the 2005 PEN/USA Award for Fiction. Marcom lives in Northern California where she teaches Creative Writing at Mills College in Oakland.

Published works include the novels The Myth of Genocide, Three Apples Fell from Heaven, The Daydreaming Boy, Draining the Sea, and The Mirror in the Well.

Magris graduated from the University of Turin, where he studied German studies, and has been a professor of modern German literature at the University of Trieste since 1978. His first book on the Habsburg myth in modern Austrian literature rediscovered central European literature. His journalistic writings have been collected in Dietro le parole ("Behind Words", 1978) and Itaca e oltre ("Ithaca and Beyond", 1982). He has written essays on E.T.A. Hoffmann, Henrik Ibsen, Italo Svevo, Robert Musil, Hermann Hesse and Jorge Luis Borges. His novels and theatre productions, many translated into several languages, include Illazioni su una sciabola (1984), Danubio (1986), Stadelmann (1988), Un altro mare (1991), and Microcosmi (1997). His breakthrough was Danubio (1986), which is a magnum opus. Magris tracks the course of the Danube from its sources to the sea. The whole trip evolves into a colorful, rich canvas of the multicultural European history. His latest novel is titled, “Blindly” (2011). Magris won the Bagutta Prize in 1987 for Danubio and the Strega Prize in 1997 for Microcosmi. He was also awarded the Erasmus Prize in 2001 and a Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2004. On July 31, 2006 he won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. On October 18, 2009 he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade during the Frankfurt Book Fair.

DACIA MARIANI was born in Florence. Together with several other young people, she founded a literary magazine called Tempo di letteratura, published by Pironti in Naples, and began contributing to magazines including Nuovi Argomenti and Mondo. During the sixties she published her first novels and also began to turn her attention to the theatre. Together with a group of writers, she founded the Teatro del Porcospino, a theatre devoted exclusively to staging new Italian works. In 1973, she contributed to the foundation of the Teatro della Maddalena, run solely by women. Five years later, this theatre put on her play, which was translated into English and French and staged in twelve different countries. Her awards include the Formentor Prize, the Premio Fregene, the Premio Campiello and the Premio Strega. She lives in Rome.

Published works include the plays Dialogo di una prostituta con un suo cliente (Dialogue of a Prostitute and her Client); and the novels La vacanza (The holiday), L’età del malessere (The age of discontent), Memorie di una ladraas (Memoirs of a female thief), Bagheria, and Voci (Voices).

MICHAEL MARTONE was born in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. His awards include an NEA Grant in Fiction as well as an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award. He is Director of the Program for Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa where he is a professor of English.

Published works include the novels Seeing Eye, Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle, Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List, Safety Patrol, and Alive and Dead in Indiana.

DAVID MATLIN is a novelist, poet, and essayist. His first novel received wide critical recognition and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993. His book-length essay is based on a ten-year experience teaching in one of the oldest Prison Education Programs in the nation in New York State. He lives in San Diego California and is an Associate Professor at San Diego State University, teaching in both the Literature and M.F.A. Creative Writing Programs.

Published works include the short story collections China Beach, Dressed In Protective Fashion, and Fontana’s Mirror; the novels How the Night is Divided and A HalfMan Dreamer; and the essay Vernooykill Creek: The Crisis of Prisons in America.

CRIS MAZZA is a native Californian who completed her B.A. and M.A. at San Diego State University before crossing the country to finish an M.F.A. in writing at Brooklyn College. She is currently a professor in and director of the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and was named the Chairholder in Creative Writing for the M.F.A. program at the University of Alabama.

Published works include the novels How to Leave a Country, Your Name Here:, Dog People, Is It Sexual Harassment Yet, Homeland, Waterbaby, and Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls; the collection of personal essays entitled Indigenous/Growing Up Californian; and the co-edited anthologies entitled Chick-Lit: Post-feminist Fiction and Chick Lit 2: No Chick Vics.

LARRY MCCAFFERY is currently Professor of English at San Diego State University. He has published numerous scholarly books and essays dealing with postmodern literature and culture.

Published works include the interviews entitled Anything Can Happen, Alive and Writing and Across the Wounded Galaxies, and Some Other Frequency; and the edited works Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction, After Yesterday’s Crash: The Avant Pop Anthology, and FC2’s Black Ice Books since 1992 with Ronald Sukenick.

ROBERT MEZEY is a prolific writer. His poems, prose, and translations have been appearing since 1953 in many journals, anthologies and textbooks. His awards include the Robert Frost Prize; the Lamont Prize; an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Bassine Citation and a PEN prize; the Poets’ Prize; fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was professor and poet-in-residence at Pomona College, and taught from time to time at the Claremont Graduate School.

Published works include the co-edited compilation The Collected Poems of Henri Coulette.

DOUGLAS MESSERLI is working, with artist John Baldessari, on Bow Down. A selection of his work, titled primeiras palavras recently was published in Portuguese in Brazil. His poetry has also been translated into French, Serbian, Spanish, and Romanian. Another book was recently translated into Italian,and published in a bilingual volume by an Italian publisher. He is the publisher of the distinguished Sun & Moon Press and Green Integer Press.

Published works include the poetry books Dinner on the Lawn, Some Distance, River to Rivet, Maxims from My Mother's Milk, Along Without: A Fiction in Film for Poetry, The Structure of Destruction trilogy parts I and II, After, First Words, Dark, and Bow Down; and the novel The Structure of Destruction trilogy part III: Letters from Hanusse (published under the pseudonym of Joshua Haigh).

SANDRA NEWMAN graduated with honors in Russian/English at the University of Westminster, London and received her M.A. in Creative Writing from the prestigious University of East Anglia Creative Writing Program. She has published short stories in such journals as Chain, Conjunctions, and Active in Airtime and her play was staged by Rule 43 Theatre Company, London. She has taught creative writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Published works include the play The Lenin’s Head and the novel The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done.

LANCE OLSEN was born in 1956 and received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies. Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. One of his novels was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere. Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two.

Published works include the novels Live from Earth, Tonguing the Zeitgeist, Burnt, Time Famine, Freaknest, Girl Imagined by Chance, Nietzsche's Kisses, Anxious Pleasures: A Novel After Kafka, Head in Flames, and Calendar of Regrets; his textbooks include Rebel Yell: Writing Fiction and Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing; his critical texts include Ellipse of Uncertainity: An Introduction to Postmodern Fantasy, Circus of the Mind in Motion: Postmodernism and the Comic Vision, William Gibson, Surfing Tomorrow: Essays on the Future of American Fiction, and Lolita: A Janus Text. His short story collections include My Dates with Franz; Scherzi, I Believe; Sewing Shut My Eyes; and Hideous Beauties.

ALICIA PARTNOY is a human rights activist, poet, and translator. She suffered through the ordeals of being a political prisoner in Argentina, imprisoned at a concentration camp named The Little School (La Escuelita). For three and a half months, Partnoy was brutally beaten, starved, molested, and forced to live in inhuman conditions. She spent a total of two and a half years as a prisoner of conscience, with no charges. In 1979, she was forced to leave the country and moved to the U.S. She has testified before the United Nations, the Organization of American States, Amnesty International, and the Argentine Human Rights Commission. She currently lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Loyola Marymount University.

Published works include the non-fiction book entitled The Little School and a collection of poems that appeared in an avantgarde Hebrew poetry magazine.

GIORGIO PRESSBURGER was born in Budapest and has been living in Italy since 1965. He graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome as a director and then studied biology at the University of Bologna from 1967 to 1971. From 1967 to 1988 he worked as a director in the radio and television where he adapted the works of several hundred renowned authors. He received several prizes for this work, including the Italy Prize in 1972, 1975 and 1988, and was awarded a musical prize in Hungary in 1975. He also worked extensively in prose theatre, wrote several play-scripts and directed numerous plays throughout Italy. His several decade-long works in the theatre was recognized in 1962 by a prize awarded by the Italian Drama Institute, by the Pirandello Prize in 1974, the Flaiano Prize in 1995 and the Riccione Prize for the Theatre in 2001. He was awarded

Published works include the novels Teeth & Spies and The Law of White Spaces; and the short story collection Snow & Guilt.

DOUG RICE was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his BA in English from Slippery Rock State College and did his MA in creative writing at SUNY-Binghamton, where he studied under John C. Gardner, and his MA in English Literature at Duquesne University. He studied for his PhD in Literature at the University of Pittsburgh. He has taught at La Roche College, Kent State University-Salem and currently teaches creative writing, literary theory and film history and theory at Sacramento State University. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals and has been translated into Polish, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German.

Published works include the novels Blood of Mugwump: A Tiresian Tale of Incest, Dream Memoirs of a Fabulist, A Good Cuntboy is Hard to Find, and Skin Prayer; and a mock encyclopedic work entitled Federman A to X-X-X-X: A Recyclopedic Narrative.

LOU ROWAN began his writing career in the heyday of experimentation associated with St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery in New York City. During the 70s, Lou taught in the City; in 1980 he entered the business-world, becoming an executive with two global institutional-investment firms. Lou has completed a collection of short stories which includes the acclaimed experiment “The Alphabet of Love Serial.” In his paired satirical novels, a well-known superhero takes on the corruptions of many current public figures in politics, business, and the arts. Lou has also published poetry and a range of critical essays. He is currently working at a long novel on the “losing of the West.” He lives in Seattle, where he edits Golden Handcuffs Review, a journal of contemporary writing in all genres.

Published works include the short fiction collection Except My Life and the novels My Last Days and Our Last Days.

SALMAN RUSHDIE is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western worlds. His fourth novel was the centre of a major controversy, drawing protests from Muslims in several countries. Some of the protests were violent, in which death threats were issued to Rushdie. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to literature" in June 2007 and holds the rank Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. He began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in 2007. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Published works include the novels Grimus, Midnight's Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, and The Enchantress of Florence. He also wrote the short story collections Homeless by Choice; East, West; and served as guest editor for the 2007 edition of The Best American Short Stories. His children's books include Haroun & the Sea of Stories and Luka & The Fire of Life. His non-fiction literature includes The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey and Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism.

DAVIS SCHNEIDERMAN is an American innovative writer and academic. He earned a B.A. from Pennsylvania State University, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Binghamton University. He is a professor of English and Chair of the American Studies Program at Lake Forest College..

Published works include the novels Blank; Drain; DIS, Or, In the Shadow of the dome of Pleasure; Abecedarium; and Multifesto: A Henri d'Mescan Reader. He has edited the collections entitled The Exquisite Corpse: Chance & Collaboration in Surrealism's Parlor Game and Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization. He has also created two audio collages: Memorials to Future Catastrophes and Zombies Alive; and written an e-book entitled The City of Omni+Baal, or, Nature is an Infinite Dodecahedrom Whose Center is Everywhere & Whose Circumference is Nowhere.

ELISABETH SHEFFIELD's short fiction has appeared in Southern Plains Review, Gulf Coast, The Ledge, Nobodaddies, the first volume of Chick-Lit, Pretext, Gargoyle, The Denver Quarterly and 13th Moon. Currently, she is writing a novel and teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Published works include the critical text Joyce’s Abandoned Female Costumes, Gratefully Received.

ANA MARIA SHUA is an Argentine writer in numerous genres including: novels, short stories, micro fiction, poetry, drama, children's literature, books of humor and Jewish folklore, anthologies, film scripts, journalistic articles, and essays. Her writing has been translated into many languages and her stories appear in anthologies throughout the world. She has received numerous national and international awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is one of Argentina’s premier living writers. She is particularly known in the Spanish-speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic as “the Queen of the Microstory."

Published works include the novels Soy paciente (Patient), Los amores de Laurita, El libro de los recuerdos (The book of Memories), La muerte como efecto secundario (Death as a Side Effect) and El peso de la tentacion; the short story collections Los dias de pesca, Viajando se conoce gente, Como una buena madre, Historias verdaderas; the microfiction collections La suenera, Casa de geishas, Botanica del caos, Temporada de fantasmas (Ghost Season), Cazadores de Letras, Microfictions, Quick Fix, and Fenomenos de circo; the children's books entitled La batalla de los elevantes y los cocodrilos, La fabrica del terror, La puerta para salir del mundo, Cuentos judios con fantasmas y demonios, Ani salva a la perra Laika, Historia de un cuento, Cuentos con magia, La luz mala, Los monstruos del Riachuelo, Planeta miedo, Su primera zanahoria, and Un ciervo muy famoso; the humorous fiction works El marido argentino promedio and Risas y emociones en la cocina judia; the poetry book El sol y yo; and several movie adaptations.

LAURIE STONE has written for the Village Voice and The Nation; she is critic-at-large on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, and a regular writer for Ms., New York Woman, and Viva. She has received grants from The New York Foundation for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony. She conducted journalism lectures at Chapman during the Spring 2004 semester and her appearance at JFC Forum was co-sponsored by the Department of English and Comparative Literature.

Published works include the novel Starting with Serge and the memoirs Close to the Bone and Laughing in the Dar.

Miguel Syjuco is a Filipino writer from Iloilo, and is the son of Augusto Syjuco Jr., the current representative of the second district of Iloilo. His first novel, Ilustrado, won the 2008 Palanca Awards Grand Prize for the Novel in English, the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2010 QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. He lives and works in Montreal.

YURIY TARNAWSKY is one of the founding members of the New York Group, a Ukrainian émigré avant-garde group of writers, and co-founder and co-editor of the journal Novi Poeziyi. He writes fiction, poetry, plays, translations, and criticism in both Ukrainian and English. His works have been translated into French, German, Hebrew, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Russian. He won a $NOW award in 2009.

Published works include the poetry books Life in the City, Popoludni v Pokipsi (Afternoons in Poughkeepsie), Idealizovana biohrafija (An Idealized Biography), Spomyny (Memoreis), Bez Espaniji (Without Spain), Questionnaires, Poeziji pro nishcho i inshi poeziji na cju samu temu (Poems About Nothing & Other Poems on the Same Subject), This is How I Get Well, Bez nichoho (Without Anything), U ra na, An Ideal Woman, The City of Sticks & Pits, and Jix nemaje (They Don't Exist); the novels Shljaxy (Roads), Meningitis, and Three Blondes & Death; the play collection 6x0; and the short story collections entitled Ne znaju (I Don't Know), Like Blood in Water, and Short Tails.

Karen Tei Yamashita is a Japanese American writer. Her works, several of which contain elements of magic realism, include novels I Hotel (2010), Circle K Cycles (2001), Tropic of Orange (1997), Brazil-Maru (1992), and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990). Tei Yamashita's novels emphasize the necessity of polyglot, multicultural communities in an increasingly globalized age, even as they destabilize orthodox notions of borders and national/ethnic identity. Yamashita was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award. She is an Associate Professor of Literature at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she teaches creative writing and Asian American literature.

DAVID UNGER is a Guatemalan-American author and translator. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst with a B.A. and received an M.F.A. from Columbia University. He is currently teaching at the City College of New York and is the U.S. Representative for the Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara.

Published works include Neither Caterpillar Nor Butterfly, Chinese, Life in the Damn Tropics; Recorded Books; Ni chicha, ni limonada; Para mi, eres divina; and The Price of Escape.

LUISA VALENZUELA considered to be one of the leading novelists in South America. She has been awarded numerous prizes for her work including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. She currently lives and writes in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Published works include the poetry books Moving Landscape, Ipsissima Verba, Nomadic Trajectory, Approaches to Absence and The House is Past; and the critical books entitled Devils in Paradise: Writing on Post-Emigrant Culture and Bound by Distance: Rethinking Nationalism Through the Italian Diaspora.

PASQUALE VERDICCHIO is a Canadian poet, critic and translator who has made important contributions to the whole discourse on ethnic minority writing and culture. Born in Naples, Italy, in 1954, he moved with his family to Canada and grew up in Vancouver, B.C. His first degree is for the University of Victoria, his M.A. from the University of Alberta and his Ph.D. from the University of California. He has been teaching in California for a number of years in the areas of Italian, film and creative writing. Among Verdicchio’s many books his works of poetry are significant for their originality with language and

Published works include the poetry books Moving Landscape, Ipsissima Verba, Nomadic Trajectory, Approaches to Absence and The House is Past; and the critical books entitled Devils in Paradise: Writing on Post-Emigrant Culture and Bound by Distance: Rethinking Nationalism Through the Italian Diaspora.

EDMUND WHITE is an author and literary critic. He is openly gay and some of his works focus on gay themes; he has been particularly influential as a literary and cultural critic on gay issues. He has received many awards and distinctions; among these, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He is a member of the faculty at Princeton Univesity's Program in Creative Writing.

Published works include the novels Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, A Boy's Own Story, Caracole, The Beautiful Room is Empty, The Farewell Symphony, The Married Man, Fanny: A Fiction, Hotel de Dream, and Jack Holmes and His friend; the short story collections Skinned Alive: Stories and Chaos: A Novella and Stories; the play Terre Haute; the non-fiction books The Joy of Gay Sex, States of Desire, The Burning Library, The Flaneur, Arts & Letters, and Sacred Monsters; the biographical works entitled Genet: A Biography, Marcel Proust, and Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel; and the memoirs Our Paris: Sketches from Memory, My Lives, and City Boy. He has also edited a number of anthologies, including The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis, In Another Part of the Forest: An Anthology of Gay Short Fiction, The Art of the Story, and A Fine Excess: Contemporary Literature at Play.

LIDIA YUKNAVITCH's short fiction works have appeared in Exquisite Corpse and Ms. Fiction International; her critical work has appeared in Representing Bisexualities and Third Wave Agenda. She won a grant from the Oregon Arts Council and the Northwest Regional Arts Council. She served as the former editor of two girls review. She currently teaches English at Mt. Hood Community College, Oregon.

Published works include the short fiction collections Liberty’s Excess and Her Other Mouths.

RAUL ZURITA is a Chilean poet who won the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2000. Together with friends, he founded the artists action group “Colectivo de Accion de Arte”, CADA, in protest against the Pinochet government, but despair in the face of the dictatorship’s regime of terror gradually took hold. No longer wanting to witness the pain surrounding him, he attempted to burn his eyes with ammonium acid but fortunately failed.

Published works include the poetry books Purgatory; Anteparaiso; Paradise is empty; Song of love gone; The love of Chile; Song of the rivers they love; The New Life; The white day; About love, suffering, and the new millennium; Militants Poems; INRI; Dead Poems; Countries Dead; Cities Water; In Memoriam; Five fragments; Journal of war; Dreams for Kurosawa; and Zurita.