“Egyptian Dance is to Cherry Bomb as Cherry Bomb is to Civil War”

Saladin Ahmed has published poems in The Brooklyn Review and MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry, as well as in anthologies such as Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry and Inclined To Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. He lives in New York City.

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Peter Anderson
“Ribbon”
“Trigger-Point”

Peter Anderson is a South African writer of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and literary criticism. A collection of his poetry, Vanishing Ground, was published by Quartz Press (Johannesburg) in 2000. He is an associate professor of English at Austin College, where he teaches post-colonial literary studies and creative writing. He lives in Sherman, Texas.

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“Writers Workshop”

Antler is the author of Factory, Last Words, Ever-Expanding Wilderness, Selected Poems, Deathrattles vs. Comecries, and Exclamation Points ad Infinitum! His work has appeared in Poets Against the War, An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/​11, Will Work for Peace, and Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age. He is the former poet laureate of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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“But Silence Remains”

John Bradley is the author of Terrestrial Music and editor of Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age and Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader. A native of Lynbrook, New York, he teaches rhetoric and English composition at Northern Illinois University. He lives in DeKalb, Illinois.

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Alberto Bremermann
“Apology To The Woman In The Newspaper”

Alberto Bremermann describes himself as “a kind of insider poet, the kind that writes and reads for his own soul.” He has recently moved to New York City from Mexico City.

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Peters Bruveris
“(Cool Hazy Morning)”

Peters Bruveris was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1957 and is considered the best poet in that country today. Eight collections of his poetry have been published, variously in Lithuanian, Russian, Swedish, German, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and English. Bruveris has translated the works of poets writing in Turkish, Lithuanian, Azerbaijani, the Crimean Tatar language, Russian, German, and Prussian. He has received the Klavs Elsbergs Award (1987), the Publisher Preses Nams Award in Literature (2000 and 2001), the Days of Poetry Prize (2001 and 2005), the Award in Literature from the Baltic Assembly (2004), the Ojars Vacietis Poetry Prize (2006) and the National Prize for Best Book (2007). He lives in Latvia.

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“A Great Beauty”

Cyrus Cassells is the author of four books of poetry: The Mud Actor, Soul Make a Path through Shouting, Beautiful Signor, and More Than Peace and Cypresses. His fifth book, The Crossed-Out Swastika, is forthcoming (2010) from Copper Canyon Press. He has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Casssells is a Professor of English at Texas State University-San Marcos. He lives near Austin, Texas.

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Hayan Charara
“The Rules”

Hayan Charara was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1972. He is the author of two books of poetry, The Alchemist’s Diary and The Sadness of Others, and editor of Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. He lived in New York City before moving to Austin, Texas. He currently lives in Houston, Texas.

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Brent Christianson
“DMZ”

Brent Christianson was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and educated at Luther College and Luther Theological Seminary. He has been published in many journals, periodicals, and anthologies. He lives, with his wife Rebecca, in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Alex Cigale
“Huambo, Angola; An Explanation”
“River of Death, River of Dreams”

Alex Cigale was born in Chernovtsy, Ukraine, in 1963. His poems and translations can be found in Colorado Review, North American Review, Stranger at Home: American Poetry with an Accent, and Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry. He lives in New York City.

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Christopher Collins
“Child of Chicken Street”
“War”

Christopher P. Collins is a veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserves. He is currently a M.F.A. candidate in poetry at Murray State University. He is married, with two children and one overweight Labrador, and lives in Park Hills, Kentucky.

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“On Learning That My Son Will Not
Be Funded In a Group Home Because
All Social Services’ Money Has Gone
To Fund The War In Iraq:”

Barbara Crooker has been published in Yankee, The Christian Science Monitor, Highlights for Children, and The Journal of American Medicine (JAMA). She is the recipient of the 2006 Ekphrastic Poetry Award from Rosebud, the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. Her first book, Radiance, won the 2005 Word Press First Book competition and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; her latest book, Line Dance, is recently out from Word Press. She has been a peace activist since 1963, where she participated in a ban-the-bomb march in her high school cafeteria. She lives in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania.