Well-known in the Arab world as a poet, essayist and translator Abdulkareem Kasid was born in Basra in 1946. He left Iraq in 1978 and since then has lived and worked in Aden, Syria and Algeria, before settling in London with his family. He has translated Saint-Jean Perse and Prevert among others into Arabic. His work appeared in Anthology of Translated Arabic Poetry (Columbia University Press 1987) and Iraqi Poetry Today (King's College, London 2003).

Rebecca Goss grew up in Suffolk and now lives in Liverpool.  Her pamphlet collection was published by Slow Dancer Press and her poems have appeared in many magazines including Ambit, Stand, Mslexia and Magma.  You can find out more about her on: http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/rebeccagosspage.html 

Nigel Pickard's  first poetry collection was Making Sense (Shoestring, 2004). First novel One (Bookcase, 2005) was called "assured, observant and unsettling" by The Guardian.

Emma Lew has published two volumes of poetry: The Wild Reply (Black Pepper, 1997) and Anything the Landlord Touches (Giramondo, 2002 and Shearsman, 2006) and a German language collection, Nesselgesang  (yedermann Verlag, 2008).

Virginia Konchan's  poetry, fiction and reviews have recently appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as The New Republic, American Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, the Mid-American Review, Jacket, Phoebe, 3 A.M. Magazine and The Wallace Stevens Journal, among others.  She is also the co-editor of A Remembered State, an anthology of writings by American authors on the 20th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, forthcoming in 2009 from Provokator Press, in Prague.

Katherine Holmes' creative work has appeared in The South Dakota Review, Cider Press Review, Phantasmagoria, WordWrights, Marginalia, Minnesota Poetry Calendar, Porcupine -   more than 25 print journals.   On the internet, she's been published at Amarillo Bay, Avatar, Denver Syntax, Eclectica, Facets, Fringe, The King's English, Perigee, Review Americana, Shadowtrain, Stirring, Word Riot, and others.  Her web site is: http://home.earthlink.net/~klouholmes/

Aidan Semmens, a former co-editor of Perfect Bound, had poetry in a number of small press magazines in the 1970s and 80s. Since his reappearance in Shearsman in 2003, he has had work online in Jacket, Great Works, Jack and Stride. Two pamphlets, from Pig Press and Lobby, are both long out of print.

Alasdair Paterson recently returned to writing after a 20 year gap. Collections in the mid-1980s included The Floating World (Pig Press) and Brief Lives (Oasis Books). He is now retired after a career in academic libraries and is living in Exeter.

Glenn R. Frantz lives in southeastern Pennsylvania (USA). His poems have appeared in several online publications, most recently in 3by3by3, Great Works, Sawbuck, and Otoliths.