Jeffrey Alfier lives in Bechhofen, Germany, holds an MA in Humanities, and formerly served as an adjunct faculty member with City Colleges of Chicago's European Division. He is a member of the United Poets Coalition. Publication credits include Uno A Poetry Anthology (Xlibris, 2002), Because I Fly (McGraw-Hill, 2001), A Time of Trial (Hidden Brook Press, 2002); and the journals Artemis Journal; CrossConnect; Melic Review; Pif Magazine; Poetry Greece; Stolen Island Review; The Richmond Review; and Web Del Sol.

Deborah Batterman is a writer, editor, and specialist in arts education. As a member of the Westchester Arts Councils Artist Roster and the Silvermine Guild Arts Center, she conducts elementary, middle, and high school writing workshops, often in collaboration with visual artists. In addition, she has been writer-in-residence at the Hudson River Museum. Journals featuring her work include Many Mountains Moving; Sistersong; Palo Alto Review; REACT Magazine; Stray Dog; and The MacGuffin. A selection of her stories appears online, in The Alsop Review. She has completed a novel, Just Like February, and a short story collection. An essay of hers is in Surviving Ophelia (Perseus Publishing). This is her second appearance in Standards: The International Journal of Multicultural Studies.

Stacy Bierlein is a Los Angeles-based writer. Her current works appear in Clackamas Literary Review; Emergence; Pearl; and the Seal Press anthology Young Wives Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership. She is a contributing editor to the all-fiction literary magazine Other Voices, and one of the founding editors of Fish Stories: A Literary Annual of Fiction and Poetry.

Annette Hope Billings is a 46-year-old African-American lesbian writer/performer living in Topeka, Kansas. She has just self-published her first collection of poetry, Hope's Wife.

Amy Brownfield is a budding photographer working in Denver, Colorado.

Emmanuela Copal de León is a queer femme who has many vices, and enjoys herself immensely. For more of Emmanuela's provocative artworks, enter her personal gallery through the Dust Jacket home page.

alexanne don: lexie has been known to wear several hats, both paradigmatically and syntagmatically, depending on context. some of the most salient seem to be among the following: writer, teacher, student, systemicist, inhabitant of japan, the UK and australia, gardener, food-lover, map collector, train and mechanical object fancier, ham actor, cat-lover, friend, lover, and harridan.

Cheryl Dunbar is the twenty-six year old daughter of Jamaican immigrants, with a heart for Latino culture and language. Her work reflects this interesting combination background and passion.

Elizabeth Fischer is an accomplished writer, artist, web site designer, and musician. Her band, DarkBlueWorld, has debuted to stellar reviews.

Canéla Analucinda Jaramillo is the founder and editor in chief of STANDARDS. She authors poetry, fiction, and scholarship—and, until recently, lived with her family in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. After three long years of deaths, births, catastrophe, chaos, and a recent relocation, Canéla is proud to finally be returning to work on this journal.

Kim Jensen has lived and taught in California, France, and the Middle East. Her first novel is The Woman I Left Behind.

Binoy Kampmark is of Indo-Malaysian and Danish background, and lives in Brisbane, Australia where he remains a Danish citizen. He migrated to Australia with his parents and sister in 1990, aged 12. At present, he has graduated with first class honours in both a Bachelor of Arts majoring in modern history and a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Queensland. He is currently undertaking a postdoctoral study into American reactions to atrocity from World War I to the present and research into the immigration policies of the Howard Government.

Claine Helen Keily was born in England 1963. She has lived in Australia for over thirty years. Claine has several degrees from The University of Sydney, one of them being a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Women's Studies. The subject of her thesis was "Style as Sign in the Writings of Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous." She has worked as a visual artist in the mediums of printmaking, sculpture and film, and more recently, is putting together a collection of collages. She was co-editor of a small independent press for a number of years named "Viola Tusk." This publication, along with artist books which contains her images and writings, have been collected by libraries within Australia. After living in Sydney, Claine has recently moved to the alpine region of rural Australia.

Sheryl Luna is the recipient of the first Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. Her collection PITY THE DROWNED HORSES is forthcoming (February 2005) from the University of Notre Dame Press. Work has appeared in journals such as The Georgia Review; Poetry Northwest; Feminist Studies; The Notre Dame Review and Margie. She currently teaches at Metro State College in Denver, CO.

EA Lynch is a __________ with two brilliant __________ to her credit. In her free time, she enjoys __________ , and is the recipient of the prestigious __________ award for her work with __________ , and is an honors graduate of the __________ program for __________ . She publishes widely in __________ and __________ . She currently lives and works in __________ with her longtime __________ , where they sip the heady nectars of __________ as often as possible.

Esteban Martinez: I hope someday something I write somehow influences - even tangentially - the rest of humanity - even one person - to see the stupidity of using "smart" bombs to burn and melt the blood and skin of thousands of children.

Christina Ranon's short fiction and poetry have been published in Tattoo Highway, Eclectica, flashquake, Liquid Muse, Wicked Alice, Stirring, Minetta Review, State of the Arts, Celebration, Voices, Erosha, Snow Monkey, and Many Mountains Moving (forthcoming). She has had a play performed by the Florida Studio Theatre and has been chosen to read at NYU's Creative Writing Colloquium.

Dee Rimbaud was born in 1962, in Glasgow, Scotland. Both his parents were artists. Dee was active in the London poetry scene during the 1980s. In 1986 he commenced studies at Edinburgh College of Art, specialising in Sculpture, which he studied to the post-graduate level. Whilst at art school, Dee won a travelling scholarship to India; another to Italy; and was selected to participate in an exchange programme, studying for three months at L'Ecole Des Beaux Arts, Le Havre, France. Dee's great passion is travel. He spends as much time as is humanly possible on holiday, and is as happy hitching round the back roads of Ireland as he is climbing volcanoes in Indonesia. His favourite country is India, and he never tires of telling people how he met his true love there. It was on a bus from Hospet to Hampi, and their first kiss was in a ruined temple in the light of the full moon. Dee and his love, Su Bainbridge, have one daughter.

Rene Rosechild: I am a middle-aged Canadian Jewish Atheist Lesbian mother. I believe that everyone should create beauty in their own way, and I enjoy digital photography as one way to do that.

Jim Davis Rosenthal is a poet, singer and artist living in Colorado. A recent visit to his 82 year old mentor, along with a reconnection to a childhood friend has convinced him that the pursuits of the life of an artist are more important than waiting for this or for that. Wish him luck.

Kayann Short is a Senior Instructor in the Farrand Academic Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is also the chair of the Women's Rights Committee for the Boulder-Cuba Sister City Organization. Her doctoral work focused on the women's presses of the early second wave feminist movement.

John Young is an artist, a writer, and an international raconteur.

Original Graphic Image, "Unshod1," © 2006 by Emmanuela Copal de León

STANDARDS > V8N1: "Bare" > Contributors' Notes