Spoon Jackson

Spoon Jackson, an inmate at a maximum security prison in California for approximately 25 years, is serving a life sentence. In 1987-1988, when Spoon Jackson was at San Quentin State Prison, he met Jan Jonson, an actor and director from Sweden who came to the prison for a drama project. He gave Spoon Jackson the manuscript of Samuel Beckett's play, WAITING FOR GODOT. Immediately, Mr. Jonson saw Spoon Jackson as the character Pozzo. He, along with four other inmates, spent nearly ten months together in rehearsals of Beckett's play. The play was performed three times- once for two hundred other inmates selected by the actors and twice for people invited from the outside. The production was a success and Spoon Jackson says he found a way to express himself as a poet. The drama work enriched his life. The two poems here were written during this period of time.

Robert Gibbons

Robert Gibbons works in the library at Northeastern University in Boston. This Vanishing Architecture, his third chapbook of prose poems, has recently been published by Innerer Klang Press, Charlestown, MA. Other prose poems have appeared in Conspire, The Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, Frank, Gargoyle, Linnaean Street, The Literary Review, Slow Trains and Tatlin's Tower.

Felix Fojas

Felix Fojas is a member of PEN International and the Philippine Literary Arts Council. B.A. and M.A. degrees in English & Comparative Literature and Linguistics & Literature respectively. Creative writing fellowships: Cambridge University, England; 18th Midwest Writers' Annual Conference, Kent State University, Ohio. Former advertising creative director and professor. Has lectured at The University of California at Davis, Sacramento State University, and Sacramento City College. Won a number of advertising and literary awards. Published two books and a chapbook of poetry. Works appeared, among many others, in Brown River, Blue Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Philippine Literature, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey; A Habit of Shores: Philippine Verse in English 1970s-90s, University of the Philippines Press; Fabric of A Vision: An Anthology of World Poetry, Cyberwit Press, Allahabad, India; The American Dissident; The Lucid Stone; Poetry Super Highway.com; Poetry Soul to Soul.com; Little Brown Poetry Magazine; Maverick Magazine; Facets Magazine; and Ludlow Press. Contributing writer: Magical Blend Magazine, Natural Beauty & Health Magazine and Mind, Body & Soul Magazine. Felix Fojas resides in Chico, California.

Lin Hendler

Lin Hendler was born in Los Angeles and lived there before moving to Portland, Oregon to attend Reed College. Her interests include world travel, open heart surgery and snakes. She has just finished her creative writing thesis, from which this excerpt has been taken, and is graduating this December. Lin is now applying to grad school programs to pursue an MPhil in Medieval Literature.

Richard Milazzo

Among Richard Milazzo's recent books are Malcolm Morley (Tangiers, Morocco, 2000), Streets of Gold (New York, 2000), and Caravaggio on the Beach (Tangiers, Morocco, 2001). Forthcoming are a book of art criticism, According to What (Naples), a monograph on the sculptor Saint Clair Cemin (São Paulo and Florence), and a book of verse, Hotel of the Heart (Genoa). He lives and works in New York City.