SAMUEL AMADON’S poetry has appeared recently, or will appear soon, in such journals as American Letters & Commentary, American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Typo, Unpleasant Event Schedule, and Verse.  He lives in New York City.

CYNTHIA ARRIEU-KING is an echocardiographer and doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has or will appear this year in Prairie Schooner, Margie, Diagram, Pebble Lake Review, and Word For/Word.

ANNE BOYER grew up in central Kansas and now lives in central Iowa. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Lit, The Denver Quarterly, Typo, Bird Dog, Diagram and other journals.

BILL CASSIDY lives in Brooklyn.

TINA CELONA’S book The Real Moon of Poetry and Other Poems was published by Fence Books in 2002 and her second book, Snip Snip!, will be published by Fence Books in 2006. Magazine publications include Shampoo, La Petite Zine and Puppyflowers. She lives in Somerville, MA.

JULIA COHEN lives in Brooklyn and is the Marketing Director for Nightboat Books (just published Fanny Howe's new poetry book) and an editorial assistant at Palgrave Macmillan. Her poems have been published in Can We Have Our Ball Back?, How2, The Mississippi Review online, Hanging Loose, GutCult, Boog City, Word For/Word and are forthcoming in H_NGM_N, The Tiny, and Aught.

PENELOPE CRAY’S poems appear most recently in American Letters & Commentary, Pleiades, goodfoot and the Frostproof Review. She has reviewed for Boston Review, Chelsea, and Pleiades, and her manuscript, The Farther Afield We Go, was a finalist in the 2004 Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series. She earned her MFA at The New School and currently lives with her husband, painter Steve Budington, and cats, Paver and Gingko, in Indianapolis, where she works at the Writer’s Center of Indiana and freelances for Publisher’s Weekly, Duke University Press, and various other institutions.

BRIDGET CROSS is from New York City and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her poems can be found in Spinning Jenny, Cutbank, Chelsea, and the National Poetry Review.

PETER DAVIS lives in Muncie, Indiana. He's got a wife and a son. He sometimes organizes readings for cool poets who are willing to come through Muncie. His poems have appeared in other poetry journals. He edited a book called Poet's Bookshelf: Contemporary Poets on Books that Shaped Their Art. That's the only thing he's going to plug by name. He's not going to mention other poetry journals he's published in or nothing like that. He's all, like, let's just be excited about being in Octopus.

BRANDON DOWNING’S books include The Shirt Weapon (Germ Monographs, 2002) and Lazio (Blue Books, 2000). His new collection, Dark Brandon (Faux Press 2005), is out and it's crazy as fuck. He still lives in New York Shitty.

GIBSON FAY-LEBLANC’S poems and reviews have appeared in The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, and Publishers Weekly and are forthcoming in Boston Review, Pleiades, and The Southeast Review. His work is featured at fishousepoems.org, an audio archive of emerging poets, and he was awarded the Bellevue Literary Review’s Magliocco Prize for Poetry, chosen by Edward Hirsch. He has taught at Columbia and Fordham.

ERICA FIEDLER lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her two-year old son continuously serenades her, humming "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." She is working on her first book.

BRAD FLIS marries Toronto to his shoes. His work has recently appeared in 1913: a journal of forms and Weird Deer.

LARA GLENUM was raised in the gothic South. Her first book, The Hounds of No (2005), was published by Action Books. At present, she teaches among the kudzu vines at The University of Georgia, where she is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Modernism and the Historical Avant-Garde, post-modern aesthetics, and theories of the sublime and the grotesque. She has recently served as an associate editor of Verse magazine. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Conjunctions, New American Writing, Denver Quarterly, Fence, American Letters & Commentary, and elsewhere.

JIM GOAR teaches at Yonsei University in Seoul.  His chapbook Whole Milk is forthcoming from Effing Press.  Feel free to visit his blog and say hello.

PAUL GUEST is the author of The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World (New Issues, 2003), winner of the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize, and Notes for My Body Double, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Slate, Crazyhorse, Hunger Mountain, Verse, and elsewhere.

NOAH ELI GORDON is the author of The Frequencies (Tougher Disguises, 2003) and The Area of Sound Called the Subtone (Ahsahta Press, 2004) as well as numerous chapbooks, reviews, collaborations & other itinerant writings. Currently teaching at the University of Colorado at Denver, his most recent publication is That We Come To A Consensus, a chapbook written in collaboration with Sara Veglahn and published by Ugly Duckling Presse. His current writing project is called One Thousand Lines from a Perfectly Functional Book. He maintains a links page here.

MATTHEA HARVEY is the author of two books of poetry, Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form and Sad Little Breathing Machine . She teaches at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.

ANTHONY HAWLEY grew up in New England and was educated at Columbia University. He is the author of the chapbooks Afield (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004) and Vocative (Phylum Press, 2004), and his poems have appeared in various magazines including Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, The Paris Review, 26, and Volt. He has served as Poetry Editor of Fence magazine, and his first full-length book of poems, The Concerto Form, will be published by Shearsman Books this spring. He currently teaches literature and writing at UNL, and lives in Lincoln with his wife and daughter.

MATTHEW HENRIKSEN co-edits Typo and curates the Burning Chair Reading Series in the East Village and Brooklyn.

NATHAN HOKS’ poems have recently appeared in journals such as Conduit, Crazyhorse, GutCult and Verse. He is working on a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and honing a commercial venture in intergalactic tourism.

DAN HOY is co-founder and co-editor of Soft Targets, and associate poetry editor for LIT. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in jubilat, Kulture Vulture, the tiny, and CUE: A Journal of Prose Poetry, and his movie reviews and videos can be accessed via his website, www.sinlechuga.com.

THOMAS HUMMEL’S work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crowd, Denver Quarterly, Typo, WebConjunctions, and elsewhere. He works for the Poetry Society of America and lives in Harlem.

DANIIL KHARMS was the founding member of the Russian absurdist group OBERIU, active in Leningrad in the late 1920s. Poet, playwright and prosewriter, he died after his arrest in 1942. These two texts are from OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism, forthcoming from Northwestern University Press.

SABURO KURODA (1919-1980), an important post-War Japanese poet, spent World War II in Java. After his return to Tokyo, he and his wife, a ballerina, struggled with tuberculosis while supporting their young daughter. He is known for his moving portrayal of family life, especially his series of love poems, A Une Femme, and the collection he wrote for his daughter, With Little Yuri. His work was unusually direct and personal at a time when many Japanese poets felt compelled to voice the suffering of an entire nation.

HANK LAZER has published 12 books of poetry, most recently The New Spirit (Singing Horse, 2005), Elegies & Vacations (Salt, 2004), and Days (Lavender Ink, 2002).  He edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama Press.  Recent poems of his, along with two essays (by Rachel Back and Donald Revell) about The New Spirit, can be found in the current issue of Golden Handcuffs Review.

TIMOTHY LIU is the author of six books of poems, most recently For Dust Thou Art, just out from Southern Illinois University Press. He lives in Hoboken, NJ.

SABRINA ORAH MARK. Learn more about her here.

DAVID MCDUFF’S Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems was first published by Rivers Press in 1973 and was reissued by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1975.

BRUNA MORI’S yet untitled first book of poems [Meritage Press] and an e-chapbook [Ahadada Books] will both be published in 2006. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Fence and ZYZZYVA , and is forthcoming in a Semiotext[e] anthology, The Security Environment. She teaches at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and Art Center College of Design.

ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS is the author of The Blue Book (Phylum Press) and I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone (forthcoming from Turtle Point Press). She lives in Brooklyn.

AMANDA NADELBERG’S first book, Isa the Truck Named Isadore, won the 2005 Slope Editions Book Prize and will be available in spring 2006. Other poems have appeared or will appear in Tarpaulin Sky, No: a journal of the arts, jubilat and Conduit. She grew up in Boston and currently lives in Minneapolis.

EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY is the author of Iterature, a book of poems available from Ugly Duckling Presse.

NATHAN PARKER lives in the Deep South with his wife Christie, son Noah, and daughter Clara. He has new poems coming out in Colorado Review, Conduit, and GutCult. These poems are from his new manuscript, Saul, Saul.

CHRISTIAN PEET’S poetry and prose appears in Bird Dog, Drunken Boat, Fence, Parakeet, Pom2, SleepingFish, and other independent journals online and in print. His chapbook, The Nines, will be published by Palm Press in 2006. He teaches Poetry Workshops and Creative Writing classes at Brooklyn College and at Hunter College, CUNY, and is the editor of Tarpaulin Sky. "Mandelstam: Index to First Lines" is an edit of those found in Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems, translated by David McDuff (Rivers Press, 1973; FSG, 1975).

EMMA RAMEY lives in Michigan where it snows a lot.  Her mini-chapbook, A Numerical Devotional was published by New Michigan Press.  Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Cranky, Horse Less Review, and Born.

MICHAEL ROBINS’ poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in eye~rhyme, Cranky, Boston Review, Rhino, National Poetry Review, Milk Magazine, Hubbub and elsewhere. His photographs have appeared in Synthesis and Unpleasant Event Schedule.

KEN RUMBLE is the director of the Desert City Poetry Series, a member of the Lucifer Poetics Group, and a contributing editor of Fascicle.  His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Typo, Talisman, Parakeet, the tiny, Wherever We Put Out Hats, Coconut, Fascicle, and others.

MICHAEL SCHARF is the author of Vérité. He is an editor at Publishers Weekly.

ALEX SMITH lives in New York. He is the editor of Red China Magazine, and an MFA student at The New School.

JASON STUMPF currently teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Providence College. Recent work has appeared in Post Road, Natural Bridge, and elsewhere.

MARIANNE TARCOV is a fourth year student in East Asian Civilizations at the University of Chicago. She is translating Saburo Kuroda for her thesis.

MATTHEW THORBURN’S first book is Subject to Change (New Issues, 2004). Recent poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, Michigan Quarterly Review, Seneca Review and Passages North. Visit his website here.

GENYA TUROVSKAYA is the author of Calendar (Ugly Duckling Presse 2002). Her poetry and translations from Russian have appeared and are forthcoming in Chicago Review, Conjunctions, 6x6, Aufgabe, Poets and Poems, as well as other publications. She is the Associate Editor of the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling Presse.

JEN TYNES lives in Providence, Rhode Island and edits Horse Less Press. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, No Tell Motel, Diagram, and Cutbank. Her first full-length collection of poetry, The End of Rude Handles, will be available from Red Morning Press in early 2006.

JONAH WINTER is the author of Maine (Slope Editions, 2002) and Amnesia (Field Poetry Series, 2004). His poems have appeared in recent issues of The Literary Review, Tarpaulin Sky, Margie, 5 A.M., Boston Review, Ploughshares, and Ducky. He recently made his operatic debut with the Metropolitan Opera.

DEAN YOUNG’S most recent book is Elegy on Toy Piano and a new book, embryoyo, will be out sometime this year.