AMMIEL ALCALAY is a poet, translator, critic, scholar and activist; he teaches in the Department of Classical, Middle Eastern & Asian Languages & Cultures at Queens College and is a member of the faculties of American Studies, Comparative Literature, English, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center where he is also Deputy Chair of the PhD Program in English. His latest work, Neither Wit Nor Gold, was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2011. Scrapmetal, was published by Factory School. from the warring factions, a book length poem dedicated to the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, came out in 2002. Poetry, Politics & Translation: American Isolation and the Middle East, a lecture given at Cornell, was published in 2003 by Palm Press. Other books include After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1993), the cairo noteboooks (Singing Horse Press, 1993), and Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays, 1982-1999 (City Lights, 1999). He has translated widely, including Sarajevo Blues (City Lights, 1998) and Nine Alexandrias (City Lights 2003) by the Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic, and Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing (City Lights, 1996). He has also been involved as an activist on many domestic and international issues. His latest projects include co-translation of a Hebrew novel (with Oz Shelach), Outcast, by Shimon Ballas (City Lights, 2007), and two books forthcoming from Beyond Baroque: A Little History, a book of essays on politics and poetics, and a collective translation of the Syrian poet Faraj Bayraqdar. City Lights published a novel, Islanders, in 2010. He has been a regular contributor to the Village Voice and his poetry, prose, reviews, critical articles and translations have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, al-Ahram, The New Republic, Grand Street, Conjunctions, Sulfur, The Nation, and various other publications in the United States and abroad. Along with Anne Waldman and others, he was one of the initiators of the Poetry Is News Coalition, and he organized, with Mike Kelleher, the OlsonNow project.
CARLA BADILLO CORONADO was born in Quito, Ecuador, in 1985. She is a poet, storyteller, filmmaker, and a founding member of a traditional dance group called Tullpucuna (in Quichua it means Colors), which performs with and for indigenous communities. She has made a documentary film on the life of Jaime Guevara, an Ecuadorian anarchist song-writer. Her poems are found in two collections which are being translated into English. She is currently working on an account of her travels in Latin America, the U.S. and Europe, and she writes articles on the arts and culture. This poet’s work was introduced to San Francisco in 2008, when she read at the North Beach Poetry Festival and she was invited back to participate in the San Francisco International Poetry Festival in 2009.
MICAH BALLARD was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Recent books include Waifs and Strays (City Lights, 2011), Negative Capability in the Verse of John Wieners, Bettina Coffin, Evangeline Downs, Parish Crews and the collaborations Death Race V.S.O.P. and Easy Eden. From 2000-2007 he directed the Humanities Program at New College of California and currently works for the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco. With Sunnylyn Thibodeaux he has printed over 20 books of poetry under the imprints Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions.
ART BECK is a San Francisco poet and translator who has published three books of original poetry, most recently Summer With All It’s Clothes Off (Gravida, 2005), and selected poems of Luxorius and Rilke in two translation volumes. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including Translation Review, Two Lines, Artful Dodge, Alaska Quarterly, Sequoia, OR, and the 2004 Heyday Books anthology, California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present. Recent articles on translating Horace and Rilke can be accessed in the Australian online journal Jacket and in Rattle e-issues.
BILL BERKSON
WALKER BRENTS III, born in 1959, is a poet and storyteller who has studied myths since he discovered at the age of five the myths of Hercules and the Greek gods. After majoring in English and philosophy at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, Brents worked with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in the early 1980s. It was while working at a refugee center in southern California that he was able to listen to the many stories of Vietnamese, Romanian, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees. Brents now tells Hindu, Japanese, and Chinese myths and folk tales at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and teaches at Berkwood Hedge School in Berkeley. He has published poetry in a number of literary magazines, including the Berkeley Review of Books, Moksha Journal, and Galley Sail Review. He has also been a featured performer at various cafes, as well as at the Marsh, a theater in San Francisco.
NEELI CHERKOVSKI, born in Santa Monica, CA, in 1945, is an applauded poet, critic, memoirist and literary biographer. He has written twelve books of poetry, including: From the Middle Woods (2011), From the Canyon Outward, the award winning Leaning Against Time, Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Animal; two acclaimed biographies, Bukowski: A Life and Ferlinghetti: A Biography; and a collection of critical memoirs, Whitman’s Wild Children, which has become an underground classic. In the late 1960s Cherkovski co-edited the poetry anthology, Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns with Charles Bukowski. Since 1975, Neeli has lived and worked in San Francisco. For five years he was Writer-in-Residence at New College of California, where he taught literature and philosophy. In 2005 Cherkovski won the Pen Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award. He is also a Friends of the SF Public Library Literary Laureate.
MAGGIE CLEVELAND looks for omens and wears her heartbreak like jewels in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, where she works as a grant writer and lives as a proud mama of two fierce little girls. She is the director of the New Bedford-based Whaling City Review LIVE poetry series, and coordinated the southeast regional kickoff event for the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Maggie was the co-founder of the Baker Books Poetry Series, which she hosted from 1995-2000. She is the author of The Kids Ate My Homework: A New Bedford Area Resource Guide for Adult Students with Children (2008), and was recently published in the Newport Review, and the journal …like this. Maggie is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College.
CLARK COOLIDGE was born in Providence, RI, in 1939, and has lived, among other places, in Manhattan, Cambridge (MA), San Francisco, Rome (Italy), and the Berkshire Hills. He currently lives in Petaluma, California. His many volumes of poetry and prose include At Egypt, Odes of Roba, Now It’s Jazz: Writings on Kerouac & the Sounds, and This Time We Are Both. He has also edited the Collected Writings, Lectues, and Conversations of Philip Guston, with whom he collaborated on the 1991 publication, Baffling Means: Writings/Drawings.
JUSTIN DESMANGLES
DIANE DI PRIMA was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1934. For many years, she lived and wrote in Manhattan, where she founded the New York Poets Theatre and the Poets Press and where she edited the literary newsletter The Floating Bear with Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones). She is the author of 44 books of poetry and prose, including Revolutionary Letters, Loba, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Pieces of a Song, Memoirs of a Beatnik and Dinners & Nightmares. For the last 35 years, she has lived and taught in and around San Francisco, which city recently named her its fifth Poet Laureate. In 2006 she received the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement and community service. She has also received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from St. Lawrence University in 1999 and a 1993 Lifetime Service Award from the National Poetry Association. She has received grants from the Lapis Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Committee on Poetry, and the Institute for Aesthetic Development. In 2000 she lived in Chicago for several months, while serving for a semester at Columbia College as Master Poet in Residence.
PATRICK JAMES DUNAGAN lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson Library/Geschke Center for the University of San Francisco. A graduate of the Poetics Program at the now defunct New College of California, his writings have appeared widely. Recent chapbooks include: from Chansonniers (Blue Press, 2008), Spirit Guest & Others (Lew Gallery Editions, 2009), Easy Eden with Micah Ballard (PUSH, 2009), and her friends down at the french cafe had no english words for me (PUSH, 2010). His first full length collection, There Are People Who Say That Painters Shouldn’t Talk: A GUSTONBOOK, was published in February 2011 by the Post-Apollo Press.
MARYAM MONALISA GHARAVI has written/directed several short films, including Psychosomatic (2005), Dreams of Wingless Flight (2003), and All About My Lover (2002). She worked on feature film projects Situation Room #2 (2005) with NY-based director Steve Staso, Security (2005) with Cannes/Sundance-winning director Rob Nilsson, and most recently on the PBS television documentary Stand Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age (2008). She has screened her work at Pacific Film Archive, Women of Color Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, among others. Traveling extensively to Brazil, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and United Arab Emirates, she has contributed poetry and critical writing to several publications. Currently she is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. She has worked in collective solidarity action on the Palestinian occupation for seven years.
BARRY GIFFORD’s novels have been translated into twenty-eight languages. His book Night People was awarded the Premio Brancati in Italy, and he has been the recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. David Lynch’s film Wild at Heart, which was based on Gifford’s novel, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990, and his novel Perdita Durango was made into a feature film by Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia in 1997. Barry Gifford co-wrote with director David Lynch the film Lost Highway(1997); he also co-wrote with director Matt Dillon the film City of Ghosts(2003), as well as the libretto for Ichiro Nodaira’s opera, Madrugada(2005). Mr. Gifford’s books include The Phantom Father, named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Wyoming, named a Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, and which has been adapted for the stage and film; The Sinaloa Story; The Rooster Trapped in the Reptile Room: A Barry Gifford Reader; Do the Blind Dream?; and The Stars Above Veracruz. His most recent books are the novels The Imagination of the Heart and Memories from a Sinking Ship. Mr. Gifford’s writings have appeared in Punch, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Sport, the New York Times, El Pais, El Universal, La Repubblica, The New Yorker, Brick, Projections, La Nouvelle Revue Française and many other publications. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
NAOMI GOLDNER is a San Francisco-based writer and educator. She has published both fiction and non-fiction in Israel, where she spent more than half of her childhood, and is currently pursuing an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University where she is working on a collection of short stories and a novel. Naomi teaches creative writing to children in various SF schools and has two lovely boys of her own.
QR HAND
JACK HIRSCHMAN was born in The Bronx, NY, in 1933. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, plus some 45 translations from a half-dozen languages, as well as the editor of a number of anthologies and journals. In 2006, he was announced as the fourth Poet Laureate of San Francisco. That same year, his massive collection called The Arcanes was published in the English language in Italy. After his official term as Poet Laureate finished in late 2007, he became Poet in Residence with Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, in part to continue organizing the San Francisco International Poetry Festival with Friends. His laureate-series book is All That’s Left, published in 2008. He’s a member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA) and the Revolutionary Poets Brigade.
JOJ KASTRA/GEORGES CASTERA, one of the leading poets of Haiti, was born in Port-au-Prince in 1936. After living many years in exile, he returned to his native land after the fall of Baby Doc Duvalier’s regime. He has been publishing books of poems in both Haitian and French since 1965. In his exile, while living in New York, he was known as a brilliant theoretician who wrote incendiary tracts in the Haitian language calling for the overthrow of the hated Duvalier dictatorship. His poems were a key incentive for the late poet Paul Laraque to create Curbstone Press’ major anthology of Haitian poetry, Open Gate. Castera’s Wisdom Teeth was published bilingually in 2007.
AYO KHENSU-RA was born in Oakland, CA and grew up in Hawaii. He currently lives in Novato, CA.
JOANNE KYGER
JOHN LANDRY was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he has served as poet laureate. He has organized poetry events and publications for over 30 years. He has served as contributing editor to the New College Review and the 50th anniversary anthology of Beatitude. As editor of Patmos Press he published chapbooks by Robert Lax, Everett Hoagland, and George Wilkie.
MARINA LAZZARA is the editor of the literary newspaper, Plastic Ocean, and holds a MA in Poetics from the New College of California where she studied with poets Gloria Frym and David Meltzer. She is a guitarist & vocalist for the Psychedelic-Rock band, The Rabbles, and lives in San Francisco with musician, J. Lee, and their daughter, Maizie Jade.
RODRIGO LIRA
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 Nod House (New Directions, 2011), Splay Anthem, 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 epistolary novel, From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, the first three volumes of which have been brought back into print together in a single volume from New Directions. The fourth volume is Bass Cathedral (2008). He is also the author of two collections of essays and interviews, Paracritical Hinge and Discrepant Engagement. He teaches at Duke University, after many years at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
MICHAEL MCCLURE gave his first poetry reading at the age of 22 at the legendary Six Gallery event in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first read Howl. He has received a Guggenheim Felowship, an Obie Award for Best Play, an NEA grant, the Alfred Jarry Award, and a Rockefeller grant for playwriting. His more than a dozen books of poetry include Of Indigo and Saffron, Mysteriosos, Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Rain Mirror and Plum Stones. He has published eight books of plays and four collections of essays. His novels are The Mad Cub and The Adept. McClure’s songs include “Mercedes Benz,” popularized by Janis Joplin and new songs which are being performed by The Twenty-first Century Doors. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife the sculptor Amy Evans McClure.
DUNCAN MCNAUGHTON
JACKSON MEAZLE
DAVID MELTZER has published numerous volumes of poetry, fiction, and essays, including David’s Copy: The Selected Poems, Beat Thing, No Eyes: Lester Young, San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets and When I Was a Poet, the sixtieth volume of City Lights’ Pocket Poets series. A long-time faculty member of the Poetics Program at the now defunct New College of California, he has also edited several anthologies, including Reading Jazz, Writing Jazz, and The Secret Garden: An Anthology in the Kabbalah. He lives in Oakland, CA.
SARAH MENEFEE
BENJAMIN MORRIS is a native of Mississippi, currently living in New Orleans and finishing a PhD in Archaeology at Cambridge . His work has appeared widely in both the US and the UK, and among other awards has received a commendation in the National Poetry Competition, a Pushcart nomination, the Chancellor’s Medal for Poetry and the Brewer Hall Prize from Cambridge, and recently, a tied-for-third-place entry in a ‘shark poetry’ contest, of which he is most proud of all. Recently he co-edited the anthologies Stolen Stories and The Golden Hour Book volume II, both from Forest Publications in Edinburgh. His preferred drink is bourbon and rocks.
JASON MORRIS
FRED MOTEN, born in Las Vegas, NV, is the author of ARKANSAS, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, I Ran from It but Was Still in It, Hughson’s Tavern and B Jenkins. He lives in Durham, North Carolina with Laura Harris and their sons, Lorenzo and Julian, and teaches at Duke University.
JEFFREY JOE NELSON
ERIK NOONAN was born in Los Angeles in 1974, and lives in San Francisco. A graduate of the New College of California, he teaches at Woodside International School. His poems have appeared in diverse journals and magazines.
CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guahan (Guam), is the co-founder of Achiote Press and author of two poetry books: from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008) and from unincorporated territory [saina] (Omnidawn Publishing, 2010). He received the Poets & Writers California Writer’s Exchange Award in 2010. He earned an MFA from the University of San Francisco and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
BARBARA JANE REYES was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her third book, entitled Diwata, was published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2010. Her chapbooks, Easter Sunday (2008), Cherry (2008), and West Oakland Sutra for the AK-47 Shooter at 3:00 AM and other Oakland poems (2008) are published by Ypolita Press, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, and Deep Oakland Editions, respectively. Her poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in Latino Poetry Review, New American Writing, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, among others. She has taught Creative Writing at Mills College, and Philippine Studies at University of San Francisco. She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.
WILLIAM ROCKWELL
BLAKE ROGERS
WALY SALOMAO
CEDAR SIGO
WILL SKINKER
SUNNYLYN THIBODEAUX is best described as a “New Orleans poet stranded in San Francisco.” Her poems have been published in Big Bridge #11, Big Bell, The Blue Press Portfolio, Generacion, Greetings, Nevada State Line, Morning Train, and Polis: Resistance. Small books include 20/20 Yielding, Hidden Driveways Ahead, Room Service Calls and United Untied. With Micah Ballard, she is co-editor for Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions. Her first full length collection, Palm to Pine, was published by Bootstrap Press in 2011.
TISA WALDEN
MAURICE WOODS
