Peggy Landsman grew up near New York City and always spent a lot of time there.  After graduating from high school, she lived for several months in the Bronx.  The first poetry reading she ever took part in was at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery.  Her poetry and prose has been widely published in both online and print literary journals and anthologies, including Calyx, Bridges (Indiana University Press), and The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press).

Raina J. León, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in Boxcar Poetry Review and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade among others with forthcoming work in OCHO, African American Review, Black Arts Quarterly and Poem Memoir Story.  She is a graduate of Teachers College Columbia University and a friend to the beautiful artists of the louderARTS Project and Acentos series.

In the seven years Kevin MacDonald has lived in New York, he's worked in varying capacities at several major publishing houses and is completing his masters in creative writing at City College. He lives in Astoria, Queens because Manhattan is like an amusement park and, while it's fun to ride the rides, at some point you need to get away from the people in the funny animal costumes.

Marie-Elizabeth Mali was born and raised in NYC and is married to fellow New Yorker, Taylor Mali. She is a student in the MFA in Poetry program at Sarah Lawrence College and her work has appeared in the online journal 2River View and is forthcoming in Calyx.

Taylor Mali is a former teacher turned full-time poet, the 10th generation in his family to be born and based in New York City. One of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, he is also the only person to have won the National Poetry Slam Championship four times.

Brooklyn resident Marty McConnell received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, co-founded the NYC-based literary nonprofit the louderARTS Project, and is a member of the Piper Jane Project.

Syreeta McFadden is a writer and photographer from the dairy state whose motto is 'forward'. She is lactose intolerant and eco-friendly. She's a proud resident of the Shire (ahem, Brooklyn).

Stephanie R. Myers (Myers Music Experience) is a writer living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She is also a staff writer for the music magazine The Deli.

Amanda Nazario was born in Greenwich Village in the late '70s and has a BFA in screenwriting from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She represented team NYC-URBANA at the National Poetry Slam in 1998 and 1999. In September 2007 she earned her MFA in fiction writing from the City College of New York, where she now works as a writing tutor. She is also a dog walker on the Upper West Side.

Rachel L. Olivares is a New Jersey/New York expatriate exploring other parts of the country; currently in Portland. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from CCNY and spends her time writing, working and analyzing the vast difference between NYC and the rest of the country.

The author of a book of poetry and short stories entitled, I See Through Eyes, Eric Payne was born and raised in Chicago, but moved to Jamaica, Queens after grad school a little more than a decade ago to "make it" in NYC.  No longer sure what "making it" means, he now lives in Mount Vernon with his wife and kids -- his nightly retreat from his marketing job in Manhattan. 

Willie Perdomo is the author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime and Smoking Lovely.  He spends his free time looking for ghosts on Lexington Avenue, between 103rd St. and 125th.

Jana Perskie is a Human Resource Consultant who has lived in Manhattan for almost 30 years. Before that she lived in Latin America & Iran for 15 years working for an NGO and doing other "stuff." She loves the City and was about 10 blocks away from the Twin Towers when the first plane hit. She saw the second plane strike and lost neighbors (3 in her building, including a Captain in the fire dept), friends and colleagues on 9/11. She still grieves. She volunteered at Nino's Restaurant, on Canal Street, which served food 24/7 to those working at ground zero.

Lynne Procope (Poetry Edtior) makes poems and is a New Yorker at heart, since her heart has lived in this city for 18 years, but she’s Trinidadian by birth and disposition which counts for a lot. She is a former National Poetry Slam champion and Cave Canem fellow whose work appears or is forthcoming in Washington Square Review, Quarter After Eight, Drumvoices Revue, His Rib, Word Warriors and Bowery Women, among others. She curates the louderARTS Project Reading Series in Union Square.

John Rodriguez is a Harlem-born, Bronx raised Puerto Rock who sends a shout out to any folks reading these notes who grew up on Gun Hill Road.

Diane (sounds like w-a-h) Roy is a Haitian-American artist/street photographer from Queens, NY. She moved here in 1986 with her parents -- political activists by day, cabbies by night -- and fell in love with the exploring and documentation of urban subculture. Now, as an anthropologist first, photographer second, she's ready to shake things up.

Robert Ross is editor of The Leader, a magazine published by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. He spent one eternal day in New York City's echoing canyons with a girl from Nutley, N.J.