BARB CAFFREY is a writer, editor, composer and musician. She holds a Master's in Music from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Bachelor's from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and plays three instruments proficiently (saxophone, oboe, and clarinet). She's also worked for several newspapers as an opinion columnist and arts and entertainment reporter. She edits for Masterpiece Comics. And she misses Michael, husband and eternal soulmate, every day of her life since his untimely passing in 2004. Barb was named as Editor of the Written Word in November of 2007.

MICHAEL CAFFREY called himself a "pre-Renaissance Man" -- that is, he's stuck somewhere in the Middle Ages . . . however you care to look at it. He held the usual miscellaneous assortment of jobs, from Cookie Dropper (yes, that's a _real_ job title) and Comic-book Salesman through Contract Administrator to Computer Equipment Operator . . . and that's just the Cs. He delighted in his marriage to Barb, and is much missed by all who knew him.

Barb and Michael have sold three stories together; the first, "Bright as Diamonds," was published in the BEDLAM'S EDGE anthology (Baen, 2005). The second, "A Dark and Stormy Night," aka the first adventure of Joey Maverick, was published by the Written Word in an earlier incarnation in May of 2005. The third is the story you see in issue #2 of the current incarnation of the Written Word, "Trouble With Elfs."

In addition, Barb's sold one poem (to the Written Word, issue #1), "A Love Eternal," which attempts to come to grips with Michael's passing. She's also sold one nonfiction article to Vision magazine entitled "On Collaboration," in 2004.

Barb and Michael completed one novel together before his untimely death in 2004, ELFY (currently looking for a home). Michael also completed two novels alone; somehow, these novels will see the light of day if Barb has anything to say about it. Six other novels in the science fiction and fantasy genre are in progress.

BARRY ROSENBERG
I've had 4 main careers. The first was a maths/psych degree followed by a Ph.D in Artificial Intelligence. I continued that for another 5 years then decided that I was really trying to understand consciousness. So my second career was teaching tai chi/yoga and being a mystic. After about 12 years and little money, I joined the Australian Public Service. My third career lasted about 5 years. Marrying an artist, I left to become a picture framer. For the last 12 years, I've been a bit of a craftsman: stained glass, woody things & ceramic sculptures.

I've been creative writing since about 1974. I've had poetry, plays and short stories in a number of local anthologies or theatres. In 2005, I was one of 26 winners out of 2000+ entries in the ABC Radio Regional Short Story Comp. My current goal is turning flash fiction into stories of 3000+ words.

BRYON D. HOWELL is a poet currently residing in New Haven, Connecticut. He has been writing poetry for a great number of years. Recently, his poetry has appeared in poeticdiversity, Red River Review, The Quirk, The Cerebral Catalyst, The Greasy Spoon Saloon, and The Lost Beat. Bryon is also the Editor-in-Chief of four online poetry 'zines: The Persistent Mirage, Bringing Sonnets Back, The Brave Little Poem Daily, and Poetic Curfews.

CHRISTOPHER HIVNER: "I am a lifelong resident of south central Pennsylvania. I write poetry and short stories in different genres. I have had work published in The Scruffy Dog Review, Phase, The Literary Bone and others. A chapbook of poems, "Edged in Blue" was published by Foothills Publishing and a collection of horror short stories, "The Spaces Between Your Screams", was published as an ebook by eTreasures Publishing in 2007."

DANIEL AUSEMA has a background in experiential education and journalism and is now a stay-at-home dad. His fiction and poetry have appeared in dozens of publications, including Nemonymous and Raven Electrick's Sporty Spec. He taught himself to juggle balls using tennis balls and pins using sawn-off table legs.

DICK SCHATZ
By day, I work as a Director of Software Engineering for a large mutual fund company located in the Northeastern US . I live with my beautiful wife Linda, and daughter Michelle, who just graduated college and will soon be embarking on a job to conduct whale research in Bar Harbor , Maine . Although I love all forms of speculative fiction, my writing tends to gravitate toward humorous contemporary fantasy. This is my second sale, with a previous story appearing in Planet Relish.

IAN R. FAULKNER is a UK based writer previously published in Crimewave (issues #8 and #9), the year's BEST BRITISH MYSTERIES, SINISTER TALES and NITEBLADE. His forthcoming work is due to appear in ON THE NIGHT HIGHWAYS, Black Static # , Crimewave #10, ALL HALLOWS and MURKY DEPTHS. Ian also contributes to the monthly webzine of VHS & DVD reviews, Videovista.net, edited by Tony Lee.

FELINO SORIANO lives in California where he is employed as a behavioral assistant; he is also currently studying philosophy. Through his occupation, he is able to counsel, care for and learn from developmentally disabled adults. Classic and avant-garde jazz are muses. Mr. Soriano's poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming in, several online journals including: Blaze VOX, Yggdrasil, Bewildering Stories, Houston Literary Review, and werve, among others.

I.E. LESTER - As a result of "inspiring" literature classes at school, I.E. Lester spent more than two decades avoiding poetry like the plague. He only reconsidered poetry as a valid form in his late thirties, when a John Betjeman poem ("Seaside Golf") overcame the block built by his English teacher. When not reading or writing, he can often be found watching cricket or rugby, or wandering medieval streets in France or Italy.

JENNY SCHWARTZ is an Australian writer, fuelled by fair trade coffee. She is an armchair socialist (an idealist when it's not too much trouble). Her first fantasy novel, The Walk Alones, is published by Double Dragon Publishing.

KAREN L. NEWMAN lives in Kentucky where she edits the online magazine Afterburn SF and the print poetry magazine Illumen and writes reviews for Noneuclidean Cafe and Dark Discoveries. She has over 200 publications including her poetry collections EEKU (Sam's Dot) and ChemICKals (upcoming from Naked Snake Press). She won the 2005 Mary Jane Barnes Award for her poetry. Please visit her online at http://home.zoomnet.net/~karennew.

KATIE KARIAN is a Young Adult/Fantasy writer. Serious. (At least she tries to be serious). Born and raised in the lovely blue and green and sometimes white countryside of Michigan, she alternates between hiking through the woods and hiking through her imagination. She's also always alternating between serious novel edits and throwing her computer at the nearest wall. When not writing or hiking, her hobbies include shopping for lovely spiral notebooks and turning her home into her own personal zoo. Dogs, horses, cats, and birds aside, she's trying to figure out how to keep an elephant in the backyard without the neighbors noticing.

KURT KIRCHMEIER is proudly Canadian, happily married, and eagerly awaiting the birth of his next fictional child. His stories have found homes in a variety of zines including Coyote Wild, Murky Depths, and Shimmer, as well as in the anthologies Triangulation: End of Time and Touched by Wonder. For more information, visit him online at kurtkirchmeier.com

LORRIE UNITES-STRUIFF lives in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, twenty minutes from downtown Pittsburgh. She enjoys walking along the Monongahela River while conjuring new ideas for stories. Her favorite hobby is, of all things, reading. She delves into many genres, but her favorites are fantasy, humor, horror and light sci-fi. Lorrie is the founder and leader of the Homestead Waterfront Writers Workshop, up and running for over six years.

MARSHALL PAYNE has led a colorful life. He has worked as a touring musician, music producer, sound technician, a salesman, and a waiter. Recently he committed himself to speculative fiction and has never looked back. He has written over seventy short stories and seven novels, the last three he’s looking to publish. (The first four were merely for practice.) His fiction has appeared in print and online in The Sword Review, and online on The Harrow, Dragons Knights,
and Angels, Nanobison, and Quantum Muse.

MARY C. WHITE was born in a little town called Rockland Lake. She is the oldest daughter of nine children. She loves to write horror stories and her first horror novel, Tales of the Half Shell, Gateway To Terror comes out this July through Rain Publishing of Canada. It is a collection of 23 tales of terror, ranging from vampires to shadow creatures, entities of evil and controlling creatures living in worlds beyond the realms of fear.

MICHAEL A. KECHULA is a retired technical writer. His flash and micro-fiction tales have won first prize in six contests and honorable mention in three others. His stories have appeared in ninety-two online and print magazines and anthologies in Australia, Canada, England, and the United States. He's authored two books of flash and micro-fiction: A Full Deck of Zombies--61 Speculative Fiction Tales and Crazy Stories for Crazy People.

MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON
Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago, IL after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Viet Nam era. He is a freelance writer and poet. He is heavy influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, and Leonard Cohen. He is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc; Directory of American Poets & Fictions Writers: pw.org/directory. Recent publications: The Orange Room Review, Bolts of Silk, Chantarelle’s Notebook, The Foliate Oak Online Literary Magazine, Poetry Cemetery, Official Site of Laura Hird, The Centrifugal Eye, Adagio Verse Quarterly, Scorched Earth Publishing, and many others. Published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria Africa, India, United Kingdom.

MIK BENNETT lives in Canberra, Australia. In his spare time he likes to write, and practice his CG skills, and hopes for a career in either discipline. He also enjoys surfing and scuba diving, and would love more time to practice both.

NICHOLAS OZMENT teaches English at Winona State University. He has taught literature courses on Horror in Fiction and on J.R.R. Tolkien, and assistant-taught World Myth as well as Film. By night he is a speculative fiction writer for publications such as WEIRD TALES, MYTHIC DELIRIUM, SUSURRUS: THE LITERATURE OF MADNESS, MYTHIC CIRCLE, AFTERBURN SF, and RAVEN ELECTRICK. Two of his stories have been podcast on PSEUDOPOD. He reviews books and movies at DOWN IN THE CELLAR www.downinthecellar.com and MANNING'S MANLY MOVIES http://manning.coldfusionvideo.com . His essay "Gandalf's Staff, Prospero's Books: The Ethics of Magic in Tolkien and Shakespeare" appears in TOLKIEN AND SHAKESEPEARE: ESSAYS ON SHARED THEMES AND LANGUAGE (McFarland & Co. 2007). He lives in Minnesota with his wife and a strange dog.

NORMAN A. RUBIN is a former correspondent for the Continental News Service (USA), now retired - busy writing short stories and articles in all genres (Near East culture and crafts, archaeology, fantasy, folk tales, religious history etc..). See 'yahoo.com' or 'google.com' under his name.

PATRICIA CORRELL lives with her husband and her cat familiar in Kentucky. She is the 2004 winner of the Moonlight & Magnolia SF/ Fantasy/Horror Short Story Contest and placed third in The Writer's Journal 2006 Short Story competition. She enjoys kung fu movies and apple juice.

RAY SUCCRE currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Laika, and Rock Salt Plum, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. He tries hard.

RHONDA EUDALY lives in Fort Worth, Texas where she's worked in offices, banking, radio, live sound production, education, and has even dug ditches to support her writing habit and her cat, Dixon. She has a wide and varied publication history.

SHERRY ALLYN NORMAN lives in Southeast Georgia as far South and East as you can go and still be in Georgia rather than Florida, and on land rather than in water. She shares her home and office in the woodlands of a small town of milk and honey with two paperweights that greatly resemble cats. Neither of which hesitate to give their opinion on anything in particular.

She has a number of short stories and poems published, and a completed fantasy novel with two sequels in process.

Her collection of Catling short stories published by The Written Word is soon to become a Catling Comic Book Series produced by Rebel Dawn's Masterpiece Comics.

Sherry Allyn Norman
www.sff.net/people/sherrynorman

STEPHANIE CLAUSON is a writer, editor, and amateur mixologist from Texas. She has a degree in writing from a college where the English
department is on the top floor of the building in the exact middle of campus. One of her former professors says this is because language scholars are central and elevated. She believes him.

Stephanie's goal in writing and life is to ask extraordinary questions. Her favorite poets are Shakespeare and her boyfriend, and her favorite flavor is cranberry. If sometimes it seems like she isn't paying attention, that's just because the artist and the critic in her head are arguing too loudly for her to hear you.

STEPHEN L. THOMPSON grew up a short drive from the middle of nowhere in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Though he longs for the peace and quiet of the country, he now lives outside of Philadelphia for financial reasons. His work has appeared in A Flasher's Dozen, AlienSkin Magazine, AntipodeanSF, Brilliant! and now Written Word. For a complete listing of his publications, go to his website: www.oneoveralpha.com.

STEVE DE FRANCE is a widely published poet, playwright and essayist both in America and in Great Britain. His work has appeared in literary publications in America, England, Canada, France, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, India, Australia, and New Zealand. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry in both 2002 and 2003. A few recent publications include The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Mid-American Poetry Review, Ambit, Atlantic, and The Sun. In England he won a Reader's Award in Orbis Magazine for his poem "Hawks." In the United States he won the Josh Samuels' Annual Poetry Competition (2003) for his poem: "The Man Who Loved Mermaids." His play THE KILLER had it’s world premier at the GARAGE THEATRE in Long Beach, California (Sept-October 2006). He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Chapman University for his writing. Most recently his poem “Gregor’s Wings” has been nominated for The Best of The Net by Poetic Diversity.

SUCHOON MO
He is a former Korean Army Lieutenant and a retired academic living in the semiarid part of Colorado. His poems appeared in East and West, Bitter Oleander, Taj Mahal Review, Quill and Ink, Religious Humanism, Dissident Editions, The Blue House, Subtle Tea, Spillway Review, Orange Room Review, Round Table Review, Snakeskin, Shampoo, Subterranean Quarterly, Word Riot, Thunder Sandwich, Underground Window, Tryst, Stellar Showcase Journal, Poetry Cemetery, Listenlight, Epiphany, The Quirk, and others. His orchestral music compositions appeared in Sage of Consciousness, Mad Hatters Review, Unlikely 2.0, Strange Road, and The Adroitly Placed Word. He has no formal music education.

VINCENT VANALLEN has written a merry-go-round of science-fiction, humor, and horror stories. He lives in Oregon, and his work has been published in Nocturne Magazine, Futurismic, and Thirteen Magazine. He is Chief Editor of Dark Recesses ezine (www.darkrecesses.com) and co-edits R.J. Cavender's Horror Library Anthology series.