Barry Ballard
After returning from Vietnam, Barry studied philosophy and theology which eventually led to an MA from Texas Christian University. Writing, however, never entered the picture until about six years ago after too many crashes from racing bicycles. Since then, he's had more luck than he deserves and has a few collections out there. The most recent: Plowing to the End of the Road from Finishing Line Press and First Probe to Antarctica from Bright Hill Press.
Poetry: Inversion

Betty Wilson Beamguard
Betty Wilson Beamguard, a writer of women’s fiction, poetry, and essays, has received numerous awards for her writing. Her work has appeared in Horizons, The Quill, Catfish Stew, Lonzie’s Fried Chicken, Brady Magazine, Whim’s Place, and The Readerville Journal. She has also published a novel, the humorous Weej and Johnnie Hit Florida. Find out more at her website.
Essay: Of Mice and Children

Dean Borok
Dean Borok was born in Roswell, New Mexico, the natural child of an Albuquerque cocktail waitress and her alien abductor. As a very young man, Borok found he had the talent to see through walls, and he was hired by French intelligence to conduct industrial espionage in Paris but was soon dismissed when he was discovered spending all his time in the alley behind the dancers' dressing room of the Crazy Horse Saloon. He now lives in New York, where he has an apartment adjacent to the YWCA, and he works as a moving target at the Shoot The Freak paintball attraction in Coney Island.
Humor: Sing-Sing Literary Society

R.G. Cantalupo
R.G. Cantalupo is an honors graduate from University of California Santa Cruz and a teaching fellow at Loyola Marymount, making a living as a non-fiction writer and teacher. Most recent publications include Nimrod, Rattle, Sou'wester, The Aurorean, The Cape Rock Review, Green's Review, The Comstock Review, The Blue Collar Review, The Southern Review, War, Literature and the Arts, JAMA and The Green Hills Literary Lantern.
Poetry: The Night My Father Remembered

Lila Caspian
Lila Caspian is a fantasy and erotica writer who has just published her first e-book, Forbidden Worlds. She loves chocolate covered strawberries.
Cutting: The Sexiest Strawberry

Michael Ceraolo
Michael Ceraolo is a forty-something civil servant/poet trying to overcome a middle class upbringing. His collection of Cleveland Haiku will be forthcoming from Green Panda Press (greenpandapress@yahoo.com).
Humor: Now for This Commercial Message

Amanda Cornwell
Wild Violet webmaster and art editor Amanda Cornwell is a highly suffanciacated multimedia artist and computer junkie -- coexisting with her computer and art supplies somewhere in Maryland... for more exploration of her cranium visit www.geocities.com/suffanciacator.

Chris Crittenden
Chris Crittenden is a dangerous deviant who believes that respect for fellow human beings should override the protocols of greed. He has been forced out to the easternmost edge of the continental United States where he spews his outlandish idealism feverishly.
Poetry: February Ice

Rada Djurica
Radmila Djurica is a Serbian freelance journalist who has done correspondence work for the Tiker Press Agency and has had articles published in British Sunday and daily newspapers, including the Scottish newspaper, Sunday Post; in Woman Abroad magazine; and at Storyhouse.org. She has served as assistant editor, reading manuscripts for the Reading Writers Service; has published articles with the SCN Television Network in California; is a freelance columnist for the British monthly magazine Code Uncut; and wrote about Serbia's International Bitef Festival of contemporary theatre for Zowie Wowie Magazine, an American e-zine.
Reviews: Movies (Gothika, Tangled, Zoolander, In the Cut, Underworld, The Importance of Being Earnest, Down With Love, The Bone Snatcher), Concert (Blondie)
Article: Island of the Contemporary: Echo Festival
Probes: Burning Spear, Morcheeba, Goldie

Peggy Duffy
Peggy Duffy's short stories and essays have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Main Street Rag, Brevity, Octavo, Drexel Online Journal, Smokelong Quarterly, So To Speak, and previously in Wild Violet. Her fiction was recognized by the Virginia Commission for the Arts as a finalist in the Individual Artist Fellowship program for literary artists. She maintains a website at AuthorsDen.
Cuttings: Weight Watchers, Jack and Mrs. Sprat

Gary Every
Gary Every is a writer from Oracle, Arizona.
Poetry: Vietnamese Buddha

Anthony Gee
Anthony Gee is an Australian citizen whose greatest claim to fame is that he once wrestled Steve Irwin and won. Though he is most probably of convict stock, Anthony thinks that Australia is a great place from which to see the rest of the world, but is trying to reverse the "tall poppy syndrome" that is inherent there by undertaking a program of selective weeding. Anthony likes to refer to himself in the third person repeatedly, likes to write love poems to bullies and takes a special relish in boiling rice until it is a thick, glutinous paste. His favourite colour is the same is yours.
Fiction: Rock Lobsters
Essay: Don't Play it Backwards, Pay it Forwards

John Grey
Australian born poet, playwright, musician, John Grey was recently published in Confluence, Nebo and Blue Collar Review, with work upcoming in Abbey, South Carolina Review and Ship Of Fools.
Poetry: Sick Bed Care

Carol Hamilton
Carol Hamilton was the poet laureate of Oklahoma from 1995-1997 and received the Oklahoma Book Award for her chapbook of poetry, Once the Dust. She received a Southwest Book Award in 1988 for a children's novel, The Dawn Seekers. She has been published widely. Her most recent books include Breaking Bread, Breaking Silence; Gold: Greatest Hits; I, People of the Llano; and I'm Not from Neptune.
Poetry: Balance

Michael Hanson
Michael Hanson is a former Army brat, former film major, and former lifeguard who lives in New Jersey, edits technical journals for engineering societies, collects contemporary impressionist oil paintings, and watches the TV show Futurama way too much.
Humor: TV Test

Dr. Elaine Hatfield
Elaine Hatfield is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii. Her first comic novel, Rosie, was published by Sterling House. Since then, she has published two more novels (Recovered Memories and Darwin's Law) and more than 45 poems and short stories in American, Canadian, Australian, Indian, and Japanese literary reviews. She's discovered it's a lot harder to be a published creative writer than a published scientist. . . but it's a lot more fun, too.
Fiction: The Man Who Lost One of Everything

Frank Izzo
Frank Izzo's earned a psychology degree from Holy Cross College, did graduated work in communications/journalism at Temple and then writing ads for everything from the Playtex Disposable Nurser to Pinch Scotch. His interest in poetry was sparked by his son, who is studying poetry and history. He spends most of his spare time keeping his wife amused and confused, playing his accordion (think Boz Scaggs, not Lawrence Welk) tending to his two wild and wooly cats, and trying to get his terminally lazy English bulldog to get off the damn couch and go for a walk. He's still toiling in the ad biz, trying to make a living, but looking to use his sense of humor and wit on a higher plane.
Humor: Zen Poetry

Dudley Laufman
Dudley Laufman is 72 years of age, living with Jacqueline on the edge of the woods in Canterbury, New Hampshire. They earn their money by playing fiddles for dancing. He has been published in many little magazines, broadsides, chapbooks and two trade edition collections. He received the New Hampshire Governor's Award in the Arts Lifetime Achievement Folk Heritage Award for 2001.
Humor: Rolling the Roads

Pete Lee
Pete Lee lives in a geographically remote community in the Mojave Desert, where he works a grant writer for a local nonprofit. His poetry has recently appeared in Lilliput Review, Medicinal Purposes, Score, and Timber Creek Review.
Humor: On Having a Poem Published in The Unknown Writer at Age 46

Pieter Mayer
Pieter Mayer is a writer from Quebec, Canada.
Fiction: Harold, Charlie, Ruthie and the Wind Chimes

John McGrain
John McGrain has been involved in historic preservation work at the Baltimore County Office of Planning since 1976, reporting and photographing historic structures. One of his special interests is industrial archaeology, especially the study and photographing of gristmills and iron furnaces. He has published a book on the iron works of Baltimore County and also two small books on gristmills and on agricultural history in the same county. Taking photographs near Baltimore harbor appeals to most historians of this region, and the photos reproduced here date back to the 1950s and 1960s. At one time, the inner harbor of the city was not a glitzy Festive Market Place but it provided dock space for real sea-going commerce, including banana boats, and for the bright white overnight passenger boats that ran to Norfolk.
Photography: Photos of Baltimore harbor

Trista Myers
Trista is a girl with a mission: finding melon balls. Yum.
Cutting: Jonesing for Melon Balls

John Phillips
John Phillips was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, and now lives in Canada. "The Phoenix Spade" is his second published story. He has short stories scheduled for publication in Space & Time and Anthology Magazine. John is a private investigator who has nothing better to do on those long hours of surveillance than to write.
Fiction: The Phoenix Spade

Margaret A. Robinson
Margaret A. Robinson grew up in New England, now lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and teaches at Widener University in the Writing Center and creative writing program. She has two triolets in the spring 2003 issue of Rattle and three poems in the spring 2003 issue of Chiron Review. Abbey just brought out her cheapo chapbook, Sleeping Outdoors in the Suburbs — 18 pages, fifty cents a copy — available at Book Source in Swarthmore. Pudding House Publications has accepted her chapbook, Sparks.
Poetry: When you disappeared

Fernand Roqueplan
Fernand Roqueplan has published with the Indiana Review, Poetry East, Southern Humanities Review, Manhattan Review, and the Texas Review. He works as an interpreter for social services and, seasonally, as a steelhead fishing guide (that is, babysitting retired federal judges and attorneys and those moguls who feel an "itch" to be in the wilds but don't want to drown, get lost or compete with bears).
Poetry: Bong Water Eucharist

Mike Ryan
Wild Violet proof reader Mike Ryan has a distressingly common name. He's not the lawyer or pharmaceutical salesman or the pool club owner. He's the information services manager. The one that loves anime and science fiction. No, not the one from New York, the one from Pennsylvania. Yeah, that one.

Wayne Scheer
Wayne Scheer wants everyone to know he's still young, although he took an early retirement from college teaching to write. In the past four years, he's published over fifty stories and essays. His latest work can be found in Laughter Loaf, Flashquake, Whistling Shade, Whim's Place and The Phone Book. In 2002, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Wayne lives in Atlanta with his wife, and he welcomes e-mail.
Fiction: First Snow

Chuck Shandry
Chuck Shandry, former Navy Photographer and rabid anime fan, fondly remembers the days of "Speed Racer" and "Kimba, the White Lion." Currently, he attends and helps out at Katsucon, since '96, and Otakon since '95, two anime conventions held on the East Coast of the U.S. (in Baltimore, Maryland). He lives in York, Pennsylvania, and tries to blend reality (a job) and fantasy (anime) as much as possible. Getting too old to admit his true age, he nonetheless tries to spread the word of Japanese animation at every opportoon-ity.
Probe: George Manley

Sam Vaknin
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love — Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain — How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) senior business correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101.
Essays: Women in Transition: From Post Feminism to Past Feminity, The Mind of a Narcissist (Studying My Death,Beware the Children, It is My World)

Alyce Wilson
Alyce Wilson is editor of Wild Violet and wants to Re-elect Gore. In her copious spare time, she keeps an online journal, Musings. She's recently self-published a book of poems, Picturebook of the Martyrs, available in print or as an e-book.
Reviews: Nearly Perfect by Farmer & Betty Meadows, as told to Cindy Day, Discarded Faces by Steve Cross, Imagination by Tri Tran, Jackson Pollock: Memories Arrested in Space by Martin Gray, Boogaloo by Remington Murphy, Dying Days by Eric S. Brown.
Probes: Harry Harrison, Jack McDevitt

Elli Wilson
Proof reader Elli Wilson is a certified massage therapist, recently graduated Penn State alumnus and a multi-media artist. She lives in State College with her fiance and two adorable pets, Emma and Beaner.

Gerald Zipper
Gerald Zipper's work has been published in a great many literary journals. Wounded Hopes, a collection of his poetry, was published in 1987. In 2002, he was named one of the state's top poets by The Journal of New Jersey Poets. He has been featured on National Public Radio and has lectured on writing poetry at the New School in New York City. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize Award.
Poetry: Make War Not Babies