e-mail: adalvarez@aol.com

A child of young artists, Jarrett Walker rode his stepfather's shoulders through Vietnam war protests carrying his own handwritten signs, which always had too many words to be read from a distance. Throughout his youth, he helped sell jewelry and batik in craft fairs across the Pacific Northwest, which led logically to a B.A. in Mathematics (Pomona College), a Ph.D. in Drama and Humanities (Stanford), and a career as a city planning consultant. His work on Shakespeare's Coriolanus appeared in the Summer 1992 Shakespeare Quarterly, while his current book project, HUMAN TRANSIT: Public Transportation for a Civilized World, emerges with difficulty through a stream of ruminative travel writing. Eligible but not desperate, he spends his spare time scouring cafes for literati, hiking the Cascades, and maximizing the oxygen output of Portland's smallest Japanese garden, also known as his front yard. He guest-edited the Cascadian Issue of Blithe House Quarterly.

e-mail: walkerjar@aol.com

C. Bard Cole is a cartoonist and writer living in New York City. His first collection of short stories, BRIEFLY TOLD LIVES, from which "The Mother" is taken, will be released by St. Martin's Press this June. His fiction has also been seen in Christopher Street, MEN ON MEN 7, FLESH AND THE WORD 4, BEST GAY EROTICA 2000, and in issues 1.1 and 2.4 of Blithe House Quarterly.

C. Bard Cole's website, the TLB DIARIES (http://home.earthlink.net/~cbardcole), features his essays, drawings and fiction.

e-mail: cbardcole@earthlink.net

Sheryl Fowler is currently slinging books at one of those horrifying chain stores deep in the wilds of suburban Virginia. Her work has appeared in Blithe House Quarterly and Aubade, and her snide comments about the work of others regularly appears in the Lambda Book Report. When asked to comment on herself, she said "Huh?" Her work was previously featured in issues 1.2, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 of Blithe House Quarterly.

e-mail: nausicaa01@juno.com

Richard Grayson is currently a visiting professor in the legal studies program at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, where he teaches constitutional history. His non-fiction has appeared in People, The New York Times, The Miami Herald, and The San Jose Mercury News. He is the author of several books of short stories, including LINCOLN DOCTOR'S DOG, I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC, and a new collection, THE SILICON VALLEY DIET, which will appear in early 2000 from Red Hen Press. His work was previously featured in issue 2.3 of Blithe House Quarterly.

e-mail: graysonric@jewishmail.com or graysonric@aol.com

Frankie Hucklenbroich pursued a wild and predominantly illegal life as a street butch for twenty years. Since 1980, she has 'turned respectable', acquiring a college degree, working in the corporate world, and writing passionately about the often-invisible lesbian women she knows so well. Her work may be found in the anthologies CHLOE PLUS OLIVIA, WOMEN ON WOMEN 3 and THE PERSISTENT DESIRE: a femme/butch reader', as well as LESBIAN POETRY: an anthology and SPEAKING FOR OURSELVES: American Ethnic Writing, a college textbook. Her critically acclaimed (and admittedly-autobiographical) first novel A CRYSTAL DIARY -- published by Firebrand Press -- was an Amazon.com gay and lesbian editors' choice, received a two-page review in The Lesbian Review of Books, and was one of five nominations for a Lammy in lesbian fiction in 1998.

(Additional reviews, an excerpt from A CRYSTAL DIARY and a photo may be found at http://www.mindspring.com/~honorine/Crystal_diary.html)

Now disabled, Frankie Hucklenbroich lives in Atlanta, plans a return to California soon, and is beginning to write again. Her work was previously featured in issue 3.4 of Blithe House Quarterly.

e-mail: pirie2usa@netscape.net

Thomas L. Long is associate professor of English at Thomas Nelson Community College, Hampton, Virginia. His scholarly research and writing include work on apocalypticism, on AIDS, and on medieval vernacularspirituality. He can be reached by email at longt@tncc.cc.va.us and readers can visit his Web site, which features his scholarly writing and poetry, at http://users.visi.net/~longt.

Gail Shepherd is the food critic and lesbifeminist philosopher/rabblerouser for the Free Press of Palm Beach County, an independent arts and entertainment tabloid. Her poetry and fiction have been published widely in magazines and anthologies. "Rae's Downtown Blues" is one of a series of interlinked short stories collectively titled INFINITY. She lives in blissful bachelorhood with her dog/advisors Marley and Riley.

e-mail: zenana57@aol.com

A first-generation Nevadan, Ian Sage Sherman was raised in the old mining town -- and current hermit's retreat -- of Silver City, Nevada, population 150. He completed his BA in Creative Writing this spring at Oberlin College in Northern Ohio. Having fled Ohio, he has sworn never to return, but possibly this is just the hyperbole of youth. This year he is living in Moscow, teaching English with BKC International House. Though he self-identifies as a desert rat perhaps his five years on the shore of Lake Erie have infected him with a secret appreciation for snow. "The Gypsy Moth" is his first published piece.

e-mail: IanSherman@netscape.net

Jeffrey Slater's fiction appears in WordVirtual, and his poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest.

e-mail: ejslater@imajis.com

Matt Bernstein Sycamore is the editor of TRICKS AND TREATS: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients (Haworth, February 2000). His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including BEST AMERICAN GAY FICTION 3, Obsessed, FLESH AND THE WORD 4, and is forthcoming in BEST GAY EROTICA 2000. He is currently working on DANGEROUS FAMILIES: Queer Writing on Surviving Abuse and a collection of short stories. He currently lives in New York City, and can be contacted at tricksandtreats@hotmail.com.