Meredith Alexander is a California-born, Chicago-raised writer, editor, and poet who recently left her beloved San Francisco for the quiet of nearby suburbia – and somehow managed to move in just below the neighborhood’s only amateur jam band.  she’s currently founding a society for the emancipation of electric guitars.

Anne Babson was nominated by The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal for a 2001 Pushcart for a poem about her conception in the suburbs of San Francisco.  she lives in New York now, where both the martinis and the irony get mixed dryer and served up colder than they do in California.  her poetry has won prizes and has appeared in numerous journals, including Atlanta Review, Red Rock Review, The Madison Review, Grasslands Review, Left Curve, and many others.

Ann Barrett was a hairdresser before becoming a writer of both essays and poems.  “to be a truly successful hairstylist,” she says, “not only must one have a degree in Psychiatry, one must also give a wicked shampoo.”  although this is the first public appearance of Ann’s visual art (other than on heads), her writing has appeared in various publications, including but not limited to Many Mountains Moving, Archipelago, Culturefront, and The Caribbean Writer.

Jim Behrle dreams of you from Brookline, Massachusetts where he edits can we have our ball back? — a cheap knockoff of SHAMPOO.

Joel Chace has published more than a dozen collections of poetry, online and in print.  he is currently Poet In Residence at Mercersburg Academy, in Pennsylvania, and is Poetry Editor of 5_Trope Magazine.  as a jazz/blues keyboardist, he has developed a recent appreciation for The Stylistics and for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.

MTC Cronin has had seven books of poetry published and another is forthcoming in 2003.  she likes shampoo.  her children have head lice!

Denise Duhamel’s most recent poetry collection is Queen for a Day:  Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001).  currently an assistant professor at Florida International University in Miami, she worked in her teens and twenties at two different shoe stores (long ago—when you still had to put the shoes on the customer’s feet!).  she uses Pantene Pro-V shampoo and conditioner.

Amit Dwibedy is a poet from India who currently resides in Iowa City.  he is trying to get his chapbook, the (O) Poems published, while working on his second chapbook and waiting tables at a diner.  he recently shaved his head, and needs to get rid of gels, shampoos, and such.

Michael Farrell is happy eating chicken curry or swimming in the dubious bay (he doesn’t put his head under, and the poetic phrase ‘fecal matter’ laps with the attempted waves). this is the day ... (the the).

Vernon Frazer spent twenty-six years as a political prisoner in an ultra-minimum-security government bureaucracy, where he disguised his poetry and fiction as grant applications and evaluation reports.  now writing in the open and living on government reparations, he eagerly awaits his wife’s release.

Carmen Gimenez-Rosello lives in a pink studio in Oakland.  her poems will be appearing soon in Chicago Review and Near South.

unbeknownst to David Hess, he is the author of something in the ‘Manifesto Issue’ of Exquisite Corpse.  other recent and upcoming publications include things in Readme, The Possum Pouch, Delmar, VeRT, BoogCity, @tached Document and the Buffalo Poetics List.  yesterday he had a gastro-spiritual experience while watching Alec Baldwin’s riveting performance in Pearl Harbor.

Barbara Johnson and her dog recently spent several lovely evenings in a cabin at Sheepdung Estates.  today she is wearing a polyester shirt.

Susan Landers edits Pom2 and lives in Brooklyn.  she likes good hair.

Cassie Lewis has started using Nature’s Gate conditioner and shampoo.  it really works.  buy some today.

Adrian Matejka is currently on faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.  he lives in a house at the edge of town with painted wood panelling.

Kate Middleton lives in Melbourne.  she is addicted to Boarding School books, though she is missing most titles from Eleanor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School series (donations welcome).  she recently slept in front of the National Library, Canberra while waiting to get into an exhibition at 2 a.m.

Ange Mlinko is interested in the scholarship of Susan Stewart, the “18 October 1977” series by Gerhard Richter on view at MOMA, the music of the Spears, and other highly constructed things.  her book of poems is Matinees (Zoland Books).

K. Silem Mohammad has one photo of himself on the web (spycam shots excluded, of course).  can you find it?

Murray Moulding lives five miles away from a forest fire in Colorado.  his new work is appearing in Shiny and Columbia Poetry Review, and the online journals can we have our ball back? and poethia.

after washing his hair, Billy X. O’Brien gets it cut by Jon at the Barbershop Deluxe in Boston.  lately, you can find Billy sitting naked in a tub with his head full of suds, reading either Ben Marcus’s Notable American Women or Samuel Delany’s The Mad Man.  when he isn’t washing his hair he toys with his web disease project named Load.

Barbara Jane Reyes is thrilled to have poems in Interlope and can we have our ball back?.  she has recently discovered Aussie Moist Shampoo and Conditioner for Thirsty and Distressed Hair has done wonders for her!  she is also a sentimental fool.

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino has a degree in philosophy from Fordham University, which has especially prepared him for doing the laundry, washing the dishes, making the bed, and cleaning the litter box.  his second love, next to housework, is music (he is especially fond of Berio, Glass, Glenn Gould, and James Bernard – go figure), and in his next life he plans to be a composer.  stripped of all illusions at an early age, he finds poetry, housework and music to be the only guilt-free things a man can do.  he lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

Suzy Saul lives with elephants in her living room.

Michael Schiavo is a freelance writer whose prose has appeared in Northeast magazine, who has poetry in the second issue of Tight, an up-and-coming literary journal, and is currently working on a novel about true love, Jack Daniel’s, and penguins.  he really loves melons.  all kinds: watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe.  he resides in Manchester, Connecticut and has been a fellowship recipient 10 years running at the annual Michael Schiavo Writers’ Conference as well as being short-listed for numerous awards such as the Michael Schiavo Lifetime Achievement in Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement in poetry.

Brandon Shimoda attended nursery school at the International School of Brussels in Belgium, where he ate four strips of bacon every day for lunch.  he also eats more than his share of meatballs and bread.  recent writing/work can be found in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Night Rally, La Petite Zine, and on pixelboogie.com.

Lauren Shufran is an English/Media Studies major at the University at Buffalo where she hopes to eventually get her PhD in the poetics program.  when she’s not writing she works on her favorite pastimes, which include puddle-jumping, long road trips with all the car windows rolled down, and playing practical jokes on her housemates (which keeps her young).  she hopes to ultimately be a professor.

Hazel Smith works in the areas of poetry, experimental writing, performance, multi-media work, and hypertext.  her latest print volume is Keys Round Her Tongue: short prose, poems and performance texts (Soma Publications, 2000).  she has just moved to Canberra and is enjoying the fabulous views of the bush.  check out her website.

Gary Sullivan never used to have allergies; however, this year, he is having trouble breathing, his “allergies” are so bad.  what’s up with that?  he can’t stop listening to Najwa Karam, the greatest living Lebanese singer of All Time (according to Gary).

Kenneth Tanemura is a fourth generation Japanese American haiku and tanka and open form poet.  he has published poems at can we have our ball back?, Bamboo Ridge, Interlope, and The Seattle Review.

Mike Topp was born in Washington, D.C.  he currently lives in New York City, unless he has died or moved.  his most recent book, I Used to Be Ashamed of My Striped Face, can be ordered from elimae books.

Andy Weaver lives way north, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where 20cm (8 inches) of snow just fell in mid-April; “hey, sometimes cliches are true,” he says.  his poems will be appearing shortly in evergreen: six new poets (Black Moss Press).  although “fairly young,” he has no hair anymore...but he does have “very fond memories of shampoo.”

Nick Whittock is a slight man who has numerous cricket bats under his supervision.

Les Wicks’ latest of six books is Appetites of Light (Presspress, 2002).  despite the usual delusion/love and absence of “take yourself seriously”, his continued attachment to poetry would be enhanced immensely by purchase of same!  he’s performed at festivals, schools, prisons, etc., runs workshops across Australia, and is editor of Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects.

in Ian Randall Wilson’s daily life he verifies the correct spellings of the Roach Wranglers on MGM’s movies.  otherwise, he is the managing editor of the poetry journal 88.  recent work has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Spinning Jenny and Spork.  his first fiction collection, Hunger and Other Stories, was published by Hollyridge Press.

Kirby Wright teaches and writes in San Diego County.  he lives near Camp Pendelton and witnesses the preparations for war on a daily basis.