Brian Barker's first book of poems, The Animal Gospels, won the Tupelo Press Editors' Prize. His poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Agni, Quarterly West, American Book Review, The Writer's Chronicle, Indiana Review, Blackbird, Sou'wester, and River Styx. His awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize and finalist recognition for the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize. He earned a B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University, an M.F.A. from George Mason University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston, and has taught at the University of Houston and the University of Missouri. He is an Assistant Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Murray State University.

Born in Louisville, Squire Babcock worked as a ballroom dance instructor, a farm hand, weigh-man in a cotton gin, a hunting guide, a pool table repair mechanic, a small business owner and a carpenter before deciding to go to college and become a writer. He attended the University of Massachusetts/Amherst where he received a B.A. in English and an M.F.A. in creative writing. He has taught English at a private boarding school, worked for a newspaper, served as a visiting lecturer in the University Without Walls program at the University of Massachusetts and has taught for 12 years in the English Department at Murray State University , where he is currently Associate Professor of English. He has been nominated by his students for the Max Carmen Outstanding Teacher Award at Murray State and for designation as one of America 's best teachers in Who's Who Among America 's Teachers . His writing has been published in national publications including The Colorado Review , The Louisville Review and the Old Hickory Review . He is currently working on a novel entitled The King of Gaheena and a memoir entitled Wrestling the Horned Beast about his experiences with and observations of a prominent Louisville man who at the age of 43 decided to become a woman.

Nicky BeerNicky Beer's poems, nonfiction, fiction and reviews have been published in Best American Poetry 2007, AGNI, American Book Review, crazyhorse, Indiana Review, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, The Nation, Nerve, Story Quarterly online, and elsewhere. Her awards include a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Discovery/The Nation Award. She earned a B.A. from Yale University, an M.F.A. from the University of Houston, and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is a Visiting Poet at Murray State University.

Ann Neelon, a native of Boston and a former Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa, is a graduate of the M.F.A. program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow as well as a Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University. She is also the winner of an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, and fellowships from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the National Endowment for the Humanities and Yaddo Artists Colony. Her poems and translations have appeared in many magazines, including The American Poetry Review, Ironwood, The Gettysburg Review, and Manoa. Her book, Easter Vigil, won both the Anhinga Prize for Poetry and the RPCV Writers and Readers Award.

Holly Goddard Jones is the author of many short stories which have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Epoch, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and her work will be reprinted in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2007, guest-edited by Edward P. Jones. "Good Girl," which originally appeared in The Southern Review, was honored with a "Special Mention" in Pushcart Prize XXXI: Best of the Small Presses. She is assistant professor in creative writing at Murray State University

Dale Ray Phillips received his MFA from the University of Arkansas. His short story collection, My People's Waltz(1999 Norton) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and is currently available in paperback from HarperCollins. His stories have appeared in Zoetrope, The Atlantic, Harpers, GQ, and literary quarterlies, as well as The Best American Short Stories and The Best of the South. Presently, he is the Nancy and Rayburn Watkins Endowed Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Murray State.