Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz founded the three-time National Poetry Slam Championship venue, NYC-Urbana, at age 19. She is the author of four books, including 2007's Oh, Terrible Youth, and her first book of non-fiction, Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, which will be released this winter by Soft Skull Press.

Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award winning poet, who now makes his home in Oakland, where he is the poetry editor for Tea Party magazine and lives with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.  Oscar's current work in progress is a poetry manuscript entitled Anywhere Avenue. When looking up information about the Bronx in which he grew up, all he could find were stories about a place so dangerous that no one could have possibly lived there; his writing is a response to, and rejection, of this stereotype.

Roger Bonair-Agard is a native of Trinidad and Tobago, a Cave Canem fellow and author of two collections of poetry; tarnish and masquerade (Cypher Books 2006) and GULLY (Cypher Books 2009).  He is co-founder and Artistic Director of the louderARTS Project.  He lives in Brooklyn.

Mahogany L. Browne (Coffee & Brooklyn), author of Unlikely & Other Sorts & Black Secret Soul, Editor of women's anthology HIS RIB, owner of PoetCD.com and slammistress of the Nuyorican Poets Café, loves drinking coffee, reading poetry and watching her daughter sing the lead in school plays.

Tony Brown, 47, is a poet, performer, musician, freelance writer, and consultant from Worcester, MA.  He spends as much time in NYC as he can, since it's been a personal touchstone for him since his first visits there in the early 70s.

Jai Chakrabarti’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Barrow Street, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Rattapallax.  A native of Kolkata, India, he calls Brooklyn home.

Michael Cirelli's first full-length collection of poems, Lobster with Ol' Dirty Bastard, will be published in the Spring of 2008 by Hanging Loose Press. After living in Oakland for many years, he came to NYC to further his "writing career." Aside from completing an MFA at the New School, he works with thousands of NYC teens every year as Executive Director of the award-winning not-for-profit organization Urban Word NYC.

Tim Clancy is a 24 year old writer/waiter hailing from Hell's Kitchen, NYC. He graduated with highest honors in Creative Writing from one of the top 25 state universities in New York and utilizes this degree every day, when he uses proper English to ask tourists if they've saved room for dessert. 

South Bronx born and bred, and attending local schools there in 50s and 60s, J.T. Clark is a retired NYC teacher with fifty poems currently appearing in twenty poetry journals. He penned The Joy of Lex, an upbeat romp of seventy-two sonnets and a crown which tells of life with his black lab, Lex -- the best service dog in the world -- and has also written Othering, a mss of 150 sonnets which recounts the journey of a person who others, who becomes "an other" as he faces a burgeoning physical disability.

kevin coval is the author of slingshots (a hip-hop poetica) (em press, 2005), whose work recently appeared in I Speak of The City: New York City Poems (Columbia University Press, 2007). as part of his '08 political platform he hopes to build a commuter train between the upper west side and chicago's ukranian village.

Caroline Depalma is a poet living in the East Village. She will be completing her MFA in Poetry at New School University in May, and samples from her thesis can be found at her blog.

Panika M. C. Dillon hails from Fairbanks, AK and Austin, TX. She recently graduated with her MFA in creative-writing poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and will be on death-metal-poetry.com.

A Pushcart Prize nominee in poetry, fiction and non fiction, Liz Dolan was born, braised and bronzed in The Bronx.

Ainsley Drew studied screenwriting at NYU Tisch and has written for GO NYC magazine, neither of which prepared her for her current gig as a legal assistant. A native New Yorker who doesn't blush to admit her Long Island roots, she lives in Brooklyn with her best friend where they are known to cavort naked and tempt both genders from their second floor window.

Anne Germanacos' work has appeared recently in Descant, Quarterly West, Blackbird, Salamander, Florida Review, Pindeldyboz and others. She lives in San Francisco and on Crete, with stopovers on the Upper West Side to visit her older son and forays down to the Village for drinks with friends.

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez (Publisher and Editor-in-Chief) is a Mets fan from the Bronx, and has a beautiful wife and two amazing kids. He won some poetry slams, founded a reading series, co-authored a book of poetry, and still writes when the mood hits him and he has the time. He prefers Pumpkin and India Pale Ales or Skyy Vodka with cranberry, still reads comic books, and hasn't completely let go of his plans for world domination.

During the summer of 1999, Bassey Ikpi took a weekend trip to New York City. She was enamored by the very soul of the city. Shortly after, Bassey called New York home.  This Nigerian-born spoken word artist has appeared on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry three times and is currently working on her first collection of poetry and prose entitled, From This Safe Space, and can be found performing at colleges and universities across the country.

Adan Jimenez is a loud, somewhat obnoxious fellow who thinks he's always right. He's a California native who moved to New York in 2000 and instantly fell in love, as the city is nothing and everything like he'd ever read, watched, and consumed. Of course, he instantly got his heart broken as the city is fickle, but his love is an unconditional love, and even though the city curses and abuses him from time to time, Adan can't help but love it all the more. He loves comics too, and thinks Brian K. Vaughn is the most handsome man currently working in comics. Go Jets!

C.L. Jones, 29, is originally from Buffalo, NY. She is a writer and poet, teaches a poetry workshop and hosts her own open mic poetry venue in Cleveland, OH. She has family in the NYC area and when she visits, the experience is always an artistic motivation.

Adam Karas is a Colorado native who moved to NYC in 1999 and has lived in Brooklyn, New Jersey and now Manhattan, and lived in Europe and Asia for five years prior. When not working in technology, he is looking for a fine Belgium beer to enjoy.

Lisa Marie Kelleher grew up on Long Island and later moved to the City to get her BA in journalism from NYU.  Much to her horror, she now lives in Ohio, where she is studying for her Master's of Library and Information Science degree at Kent State.

A recipient of artist fellowships from Cave Canem and Vona (Voices of OurNation), Alan King's fiction and poems have appeared in The Arabesques Review, Warpland, Foliate Oak, Nimble, The Scruffy Dog Review, and Word Catalyst Magazine. His other publications include Adagio Verse Quarterly, Ink Stains, Taboo Haiku, and Whimperbang.

David King is a Queens-born, Brooklyn-raised actor, writer & educator who believes in communalism and the arts. Because the View, a collection of original poems, images & the random, is directly inspired by the only city he truly loves and has ever called home.