Sandra Alcosser 
Sandra Alcosser founded and directs the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University each fall, as well as SDSU's International Writers Program at National University of Ireland, Galway 2004-2005. She is Poet-in-Residence for Poets House, New York, The Wildlife Conservation Society and Central Park Zoo. She is on the editorial board for SDSU's Poetry International,  as well as the poetry editor for Parabola Magazine, and The Wildlife Conservation Society's State of the Wild. She has been the Richard Hugo Visiting Scholar at the University of Montana and the Poet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.

Her most recent book of poetry, Except by Nature, selected for the National Poetry Series, received four national awards including the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. James Tate chose A Fish to Feed All Hunger, her first book of poems, for the Associated Writing Program Award Series in Poetry.   She has received numerous  other awards including two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.  Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker, The Paris Review and the Push Cart Prize Anthology.

Brighton Press, San Diego, has published four livre d'artistes with her poetry, which have been exhibited internationally at museums including Museé d'Art Américan, Giverny and the National Museum of Women in the Arts and are in many special collections including UCSD, SDSU, Atheneum, Harvard Library, Newbery Library, and The New York Public Library.   As an environmental advocate, Alcosser has toured for years, reading poems and lecturing on writing and natural history, and served as a writer-in-residence for Glacier and Yosemite National Park, Central Park New York, and Canyonlands Field Institute .

Roberta Alexander
Roberta Alexander has a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from UCSD. She is a Professor of English and Chicano Studies and the author of two college reading textbooks: A Community of Readers (now in its 3rd edition) - Allyn and Bacon Longman and Joining a Community of Readers (now in its 3rd edition) - Allyn and Bacon Longman. She is also the author of an ESL textbook, Reading for Meaning - (1989, Longman)  Her current manuscript in progress is Five Generations of the Alexander Family, (a multi-generational family autobiography)

Adrian Arancibia
Adrian Arancibia is a San Diego writer. He is a founding member of the Taco Shop Poets and the arts collaborative Voz Alta. A co-editor of the Taco Shop Poets Anthology: Chorizo Tonguefire, he currently writes for the San Diego Union Tribune and for national magazines. Born in Iquique, Chile he is currently working on his Ph.D. in Literature at U.C. San Diego and is a full-time professor at Miramar Community College. His work comments the lives of immigrants on the border.

Chris Baron
Chris Baron began his journey in New York City. Born into the tumultuous life of an artist's family, he survived. He also became equipped for a life of discovery. Naturally, this means he has transformed into a loyal Californian, having lived in the Bay Area, Laguna Beach, and now, San Diego.  Chris is passionate about the importance of art as a practical resource for discovering truth, and as a means of survival, in our every day lives. Chris completed his MFA in Poetry in 1998, and is currently on the executive board for the Border Voices Poetry Project. He also teaches English and Writing at San Diego City College while consulting on writing programs in other schools. His work has appeared in a number of literary magazines and journals including, Pearl, Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature, Sierra Club Press, City Works, and more.

Josh Baxt
Josh Baxt grew up in Northern Virginia and migrated to San Diego in 1990. He has an MFA in creative writing from SDSU and writes for a local nonprofit. In 2002 his play, Like a War, was produced for the Fritz Blitz. Josh's work can be found online and in City Works where he was a featured local writer. Josh was formerly the director of the San Diego Writing Center. He lives in La Mesa with his wife, Emily, and their son, Russell.

Nancy Cary
Nancy Cary has an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA English with a Creative Writing Emphasis and an American Literature minor from SDSU. Her BA is in English from the University of Oregon. She is an English Professor & Chair of English, Philosophy, & Humanities at San Diego City College and the Grievance Conciliator for AFT Local 1931. Ms. Cary is also a Freelance Writer. Her publications include:
Book Reviews: Rhapsody in Plain Yellow by Marilyn Chin. Rattle Poetry Magazine, Summer 2003 and Geography of Home: Poetry of Place. Editor Christopher Buckley. Rattle Magazine 2001.
Freelance essays: "Keeping the Spoken Word in the Hood." Uptown Marquee, Spring 1999; "Surf, Girl, Surf" San Diego Reader, 3/99; "Alpine Sun, Hometown Newspaper" San Diego Reader, 3/99; "Dave Oddo--SD Housing Advocate" San Diego Reader 7/99; 
Poetry: City Works, Vols. 2 and 4. Fiction: "Phone Banking" in The Forum: Academic Senate Journal, 1997.

Aimee Lee and William Cheek
Aimee Lee Cheek is a writer and community activist in San Diego. She is the co-author of John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom 1839-65 with William Cheek.

William Cheek is a retired Professor of History at San Diego State University. He has also taught at Hollins College, the University of Virginia, the University of Arkansas, as a visiting professor in Montreal, Aix-en-Provence, and Paris, the last under a Fulbright Grant. He is the author of Black Resistance Before the Civil War and John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom with Aimee Lee Cheek. 

Marilyn Chin
Marilyn Chin is the author of Dwarf Bamboo and The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty. Her new book RHAPSODY IN PLAIN YELLOW was published by Norton in 2002. Her books have become Asian American classics and are taught in classrooms nationally. She has won numerous awards for her poetry, including a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship from Harvard, two NEAs, the Stegner Fellowship, the PEN/Josephine Miles Award, four Pushcart Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan, the Paterson Poetry Prize, residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Lannan Residency, the Djerassi Foundation and others…

She is featured in a variety of anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Unsettling America, The Open Boat, and The Best American Poetry of l996. She was featured in Bill Moyers’ PBS series The Language of Life.

She has taught poetry workshops internationally, recently at the National University of Singapore, UTS in Sydney and at the Writer’s Workshop in Iowa City. She co-directs the MFA program at San Diego State University.

Jennifer Cost
Jennifer Cost has an M.A. in American Literature from San Diego State University. She is an Associate Professor English and Humanities at Mesa College and the American Federation of Teachers Vice President for Mesa College. She also co-coordinates the Honors Program at Mesa College. Her photographs have appeared in City Works in 2000 and at Dos Mil Espacios at San Diego City College in the spring of 2000.

Mike Davis
Mike Davis is a MacArthur fellow and is the author of Land of the Lost Mammoths, Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See (with Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew), Dead Cities, City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Magical Urbanism, Late Victorian Holocausts and Prisoners of the American Dream. His numerous essays and articles have appeared in major magazines and newspapers around the world. He lives in San Diego.

Heather Eudy
Heather Eudy has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University and a BA in English from San Francisco State University. She also has a certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from UCSD. Heather has taught English in the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca in Mexico and in a variety of schools in San Diego, her native city. She currently teaches English at Southwestern College and San Diego City College and continues to write poetry, fiction, essays and travel narratives.

Maria Figueroa
Maria Figueroa is a first generation Chicana, born in Santa Ana California and now makes her home in San Diego where she is a tenured faculty member of English and Chicano Studies at San Diego City College. Upon graduating from UCSD with a BA in Theater she traveled 2000 miles east to cold New Hampshire and attained a Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College. She's performed in such venues as The South Coast Repertory with the Hispanic Playwrights Project, Teatro Lagrimas y Risas in the production of Roosters, UCSD Teatro Sin Nombre, Solo Cafe at the Campo Ruse and with Teatro Izcalli. In addition to her performance work, she's ventured into the area of directing, having co-directed with the renowned Chicano Theater Historian, Jorge Huerta in the production of Guadalupe. She's currently directing a one-woman show, Doin' Time: Through the Visiting Glass which looks at incarcerate relatives and the effects on families in the free world.

Lucia Gbaya-Kanga
A Sierra Leonean/Philly "native" and a recent San Diego resident, Lucia Gbaya-Kanga teaches at City College and Platt College of Art & Design.  She has performed at various venues in Philadelphia and San Diego, and her work focuses on issues such as: fragmentation, displacement, exile, war, and relationships between mother and child. Her recent publications can be found in Sunshine Noir, Chain, and Pilot. She currently co-host a specialty show "illfonix" on KSDS Jazz 88 and is involved in various upcoming projects with community artists, activists, and educators.  

Tamara Johnson
If you were to see Tamara Johnson at the supermarket for example, you probably wouldn't think twice, but she has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University and has published poetry in City Works and several other literary journals.

Steve Kowit
Steve Kowit was born in New York City and educated at San Francisco State University in California (M.A., 1968) and at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina (M.F.A., 1992). Kowit received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship as well as the Atlanta Review's Puamanok Prize for poetry (1996). Since 1990, he has held the position of professor of English at Southwestern College in Chula Vista. His poems have been published in Poetry Now, Wormwood Review, New York Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal, among others. One of the best-known and most sought after workshop teachers in California, Steve Kowit has written a poetry writing guidebook, In the Palm of Your Hand, which is widely used in colleges and universities. His most recent books of poetry include Passionate Journey: Poems and Drawings in the Erotic Mood and The Dumbbell Nebula. 

Sue Luzzaro
Susan Luzzaro teaches English at Southwestern College and lives in Chula Vista with her family. She has been awarded the Los Angeles Arts Council Award, an AWP Intro Award, a Breadloaf Scholarship, and first place in the Santa Cruz National Writers Union contest for her poetry. Her poetry has twice been nominated for a Pushcart. Individual poems have been published in: The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Kalliope, Poetry Flash International, Sonora Review, Water-Stone, ZYZZYVA, etc. Trask House Books published her chapbook of poems entitled Complicity and West End Press published her book entitled Flesh Envelope. Her essays have been published by Bottom Dog Press, Puerto del Sol, and Under the Sun. She is a contributing writer to The San Diego Reader. Some of the essays selected by editor and author Judith Moore are: "This is the Way It Happened," "Ode to Highway 54," "Visiting the Oracles," "A Taste of Wild Honey," and "Women's Work."

Nadia Mandilawi
Nadia Mandilawi has lived in San Diego for the past five years. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University, co-edits City Works, and is an Assistant Professor of English as San Diego City College.

Hector Martinez
Hector Martinez has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. His fiction has appeared in Zyzzyva and he has published poetry in Quarterly West and Puerto del Sol. Mr. Martinez was a member of the Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers series committee at San Diego State University and has worked with California Poets in the Schools. He teaches English, Chicano Studies, and Creative Writing at San Diego City College.

Alys Masek
Alys Masek is a public interest attorney.  She holds a J.D. from University of California, Hastings College of the Law.  In addition, she is a poet and has published in Noe Valley Review and City Works.

Kelly Mayhew
Kelly Mayhew has an MA in English from San Diego State University and a PhD in American Cultural Studies from Bowling Green State University. She is co-author with Jim Miller and Mike Davis of Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See (New Press, 2003) and co-author with Jim Miller of Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire (The New Press, 2005). Kelly has also recently published a teacher's resource manual to accompany the 7th edition of Race, Class, and Gender in the United States edited by Paula Rothenberg (Worth, 2007). Her critical work has appeared in Fiction International, American Book Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of English, Assistant Chair of the English, Philosophy, and Humanities Department, and Honors Program Coordinator at San Diego City College and the San Diego Community College District Honors Coordinator. She was formerly an editorial assistant for Fiction International.

Jim Miller
Jim Miller has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University and a PhD in American Cultural Studies from Bowling Green State University.  His first book, Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See (with Mike Davis and Kelly Mayhew) came out on The New Press in 2003. His next book, Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire (with Kelly Mayhew) came out on The New Press in 2005.  His novel, Drift, is on the University of Oklahoma Press (spring 2007). Jim has published fiction in Fiction International, New Novel Review, Kiosk, Bakunin, Heaven Bone, Hastings Women's Law Review, Left Curve, Umbrella Magazine, and Jack Ruby's Slippers. His poetry has appeared in California Quarterly, The Ethiop's Ear, Paterson Literary Review, Cedar Hill Review, Portfolio, The Moment, and Pacific Review. His critical work has been published in Canon, Science Fiction Studies, Modern Drama, Research and Society, Postmodern Studies, Working Title, A Community of Readers, The Journal of San Diego History, American Book Review, Two Girl's Review, San Diego CityBeat, Voice of San Diego, and the San Diego Union Tribune. He is an Associate Professor of English at San Diego City College. He was formerly an assistant editor for Fiction International.

Alessandra Moctezuma
Alessandra Moctezuma is an Assistant Professor of Art and Art Gallery Director at San Diego Mesa College, where she is also in charge of the Museum/Gallery Studies program. Ms. Moctezuma has Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees from UCLA and is currently in a Ph.D. program in Hispanic Languages and Literature at the State University of New York at Stonybrook.  In Los Angeles, she taught design classes at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and conducted arts workshops for young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Ms. Moctezuma was a founding member of the Latino architect-artist collaborative ADOBE LA.  She exhibited works with the group at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, among others.  She also belonged to the interdisciplinary group Collage Ensemble, presenting performance works in various sites and galleries throughout Los Angeles, and internationally in Osaka, Japan and Mexico City.  As a visual artist, she has exhibited her paintings, prints and videos and also completed several murals, including Homage to Siqueiros with muralist Eva Cockcroft in 1998.  Her work deals with issues relevant to the Latino community, with popular culture and feminist satire. 

In addition, Alessandra has extensive experience as a gallery curator and arts administrator. She worked for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority as the Public Arts Officer for four years, managing large-scale public arts projects in the L.A. Metro System. Previously, she was the Gallery Curator and Assistant Gallery Curator for the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, for three years, with responsibility for managing the gallery exhibitions and designing and supervising gallery installations.   She also served in the Public Art Commission for the City of Pasadena.

Lance Newman
Lance Newman is Assistant Professor of Literature and Writing Studies at California State University at San Marcos. He earned his doctorate in American Literature at Brown University, where he specialized in the interdisciplinary study of cultural representations of nature and the environment. He is the author of The Class Politics of Nature in New England Transcendentalism (Palgrave, 2005) and co-editor of Transatlantic Romanticism: An Anthology of American, British, and Canadian Literature, 1767-1867 (Longman, 2005). Newman's essays on such writers as William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller have appeared, or are forthcoming, in American Literature, New England Quarterly, The Concord Saunterer, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Romanticism on the Net, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, and elsewhere. He has also worked for twelve years as a guide on the Colorado and Green rivers in southeastern Utah and in Grand Canyon.

Terrie Leigh Relf
Terrie Leigh Relf lives in the "arty" community of South Park in San Diego, CA.  When she's not teaching English at San Diego City College, she writes, edits, coaches clients, and emcees the 4th Sunday Open Mic at Santos, WritersMonthly has closed its cyber doors, and embarked on a new venture: WORD San Diego, a new print zine released in October, for which she is the poetry editor.  "Poet's Workshop" has moved to MindFire, where she also writes a monthly mini-newletter, "FireWeed", which features poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction.  She continues to pen "The Mistress of Rhetoric" column for The Espresso, San Diego's newspaper for coffee and cafe culture, is the "deputy" poetry editor at NFG--Writing with an Attitude, as well as a guest columnist for writeronline.  Relf's latest collection of poetry, Jupiter's Eye, was released in September 2004 by Samsdotpublishing.com.  With over three-hundred publishing credits, her work has appeared extensively both on-and-off-line.

Elva Salinas
Elva Salinas has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from the University of California San Diego. She teaches English and Chicano Studies at San Diego City College.

Wendy Smith
Wendy Smith has an MA from San Diego State University and is currently an Associate Professor of English at Mesa College.  She has published work in the Union Tribune and elsewhere, as well as being a freelance book reviewer for the UT. She also coordinates the twice-yearly Miramar College Spoken Word Performance.

Perry Vásquez
Perry Vásquez was born in 1959 in Los Angeles, California He lives and works in San Diego. Vasquez earned an M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego in 1991 and a B.A. in Political Science and Art from Stanford University in 1982.

Since the early 1990s, Perry Vásquez has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions at a number of museums and galleries in the United States. He had a solo exhibition at Calles y Sueños in 1999 in Chicago.  He has shown his work in exhibitions at the ICE Gallery in San Diego in 2004 and 2003; Galería de la Raza in San Francisco in 2003; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego in 2003, 2002 and 2001, among other venues. Vásquez has presented performances at the Sushi Performance Gallery in San Diego in 1999; the University of California, Los Angles in 1998; and the University of California, San Diego in 1997. His work is in public and private collections, including the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and the Laguna Beach Museum of Art. 

Candy Waltz
Candy Waltz has a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. She teaches Humanities at San Diego City College and is the advisor to the Honors Program.

DJ Watson
Donna J. Watson is an Associate Professor at San Diego City College, where she teaches literature and creative writing. She is also an editor for City Works, City College’s literary magazine. In addition, she co-produces the ZHI-spot, a writer’s workshop in San Diego. Most recently she was featured artist for Border Voices, at San Diego State University (2003), the Laurie Okuma Literary Series (2003) and has also featured as guest artist for Inspiration House, KPFK—FM in Los Angeles, Illphonix, KSDS—FM in San Diego, the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, the Blue Nun in Washington, D.C., Four Seasons in Baltimore, MD. and the World Stage in Los Angeles, CA. In addition, she produced and featured in the choreopoem, Incidents in the Life of a Free Gyrl at the Juke Joint in San Diego, CA. (2002). Her work has appeared in Catalyst Magazine, the Pacific Review, The Drumming Between Us, City Works and Border Voices. She has published a chapbook of poetry, Dyna Ho Hums and a CD/anthology entitled Nommogeneity.

Mary Williams
Mary Williams has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. Currently she writes and edits for Greenhaven Press, an educational publisher in Rancho Bernardo. Her poetry has appeared in AlpaBit Soup, River Styx, Squaw Review, and Cedar Hill Review. In 1993 she won the Carter G. Woodson Honor Book Award for Issues in Racism, a nonfiction book for young adults. She was the featured writer in City Works in 2002. Mary writes with the hope of being part of whatever it is that can open up lines of healthy communication in the world. She believes that art, education, humor, and compassion are allies in the struggle for human survival.