Diane Payne lives in a small town in Arkansas with her teenaged daughter and endless critters. She teaches English at University of Arkansas-Monticello, where she's also faculty advisor of their literary magazine, The Foliate Oak (http:// www.foliateoak.uamont.edu). Diane is the author of the novel Burning Tulips.
C.S. Fuqua’s books include Big Daddy’s Gadgets (2006, SF, Awe-Struck Books, 2006), Walking after Midnight: Tales of Dark Faith (dark fantasy short fiction collection, RAGE Machine Books, Canada, 2005), Music Fell on Alabama, Divorced Dads, Notes to My Becca, and the Deadlines audio novel series. His short fiction and poems appear widely in publications such as CHIRON REVIEW, PEARL, DARK REGIONS, MAINSTREET RAG, BRUTARIAN, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, CEMETERY DANCE, BOGG, and Year's Best Horror Stories XIX, XX and XXI. He is a former newspaper and magazine journalist. For more information about his writing and other passions, including music and the playing and construction of native American flutes.
Opal Palmer Adisa is a poet, fiction writer and performer. Jamaican born, she is also a literary critic and a storyteller. Her published works are It Begins with Tears, novel, Heinemann, 1997; Tamarind and Mango Women, 1992 (which won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award); traveling women, 1989, Bake-Face and Other Guava Stories, 1986 and Pina, The Many-Eyed Fruit, 1985. Recordings include "Fierce/Love" with Devorah Major, 1992.
Her poetry, fiction and essays have also been published in numerous magazines. Her newest collection, Eros Muse (Africa World Press), 2006 explores her love for writing and personifies her muse as her ultimate lover. Adisa loves writing about the sensuous and things of the heart. Her other publications are Until Judgment Comes (Peepaltree Press), stories, 2006; Caribbean Passion, poetry, 2004 and Leaf-of-Life, poetry, 2002.
Dixie Salazar has published three books of poetry: HOTEL FRESNO by Blue Moon Press in 1988, REINCARNATION OF THE COMMONPLACE (national poetry award winner) by Salmon Run Press in 1999, and BLOOD MYSTERIES by University of Arizona in 2003. LIMBO, my novel, was published by White Pine Press in 1995. I have also published numerous poems and some short stories in about sixty different literary journals, including, THE MISSOURI REVIEW, THE RED BRICK REVIEW, POETRY INTERNATIONAL and PLOUGHSHARES, as well as quite a few anthologies such as MANY CALIFORNIAS, UNSETTLING AMERICA and HIGHWAY 99.