Bob Bergin, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer, usually writes on the history of aviation in Southeast Asia and China, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), and military operations in the World War II China-Burma-India theater. Occasionally he writes an essay or a short story. He has three published novels set in Asia

Marwa Berro is a writer by avocation and a freelance editor, journalist, and translator by vocation. She lives, works, and learns in Beirut, Lebanon. She is a graduate student in philosophy, and her academic focuses range from existentialism to mathematical logic to philosophy of science. Being an Arab by blood and an American by birth, she is deeply concerned about issues of Islam and Western liberal secularism in the Middle East.

Rachelle Bijou is a native New Yorker who lived and worked in Paris for several years. Her work has appeared in various journals including Literary Imagination, The French Literary Review, and Upstairs at Duroc. She has just completed her second poetry collection entitled The Office Minstrel.

William Bryant lived and worked in the Middle East for many years. He has written biographies of Alfred Russel Wallace and Roger Casement and several novels including a work of gay erotica, "Iquitos 1910."

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Julie Carl is a Korean American who currently lives in Brooklyn. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley, and, most recently, earned her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. This is her first published story.

Jeffrey Essmann’s theater and performance work includes his one-man show Artificial Reality (Drama Desk Award nominee), and the cult hit Triplets in Uniform. His piece Johannes, Pyotr & Marge was produced at the 2005 Humana Festival, where it was awarded the Heideman Prize.

Sujatha Gidla was born in India. She studied physics. She lives in New York where she works as a subway train conductor. “Wedding Pig“ is an excerpt from INSIDE OUTSIDE, a book-length multi-generational narrative of her family set around the time of India's independence from British colonial rule.

Nicholas Machiavelli lives and writes in New York City.

Gary McDonald, 21 this year, remains a child to the craft of writing. Born to humble surroundings in the south of England, he joined various online writing communities, as he attempted to better understand and appreciate writing as a whole. Now focusing primarily on poetry for its brief, cathartic nature, he looks for new ways to improve both himself and his words.

Canadian Christopher G. Moore is the creator of the award-winning Vincent Calvino Private Eye series and the author of the Land of Smiles Trilogy. His Vincent Calvino series has been optioned and is being developed for a Hollywood feature film. Asia Hand, the second in the Calvino series, won the 2011 Shamus Award for best original paperback. The German edition of Cut Out, titled Zero Hour in Phnom Penh, the third Calvino novel, won a German Critics Award for international crime fiction in 2004 and Premier Special Director Book Award Semana Negra, Spain in 2007.  His non-fiction books include Heart Talk, The Vincent Calvino Reader, and The Cultural Detective. He is also the editor and contributor to Bangkok Noir, an anthology of short stories set in Bangkok.

Tiffany Phan Nguyen was born in Redwood City, CA but currently lives in Philadelphia, PA. She is a senior at Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, PA. "Ford" is her first published poem.

Chivas Sandage's writing is forthcoming in Paradise Found (Levellers Press, ’11) and has appeared in Artful Dodge, Ms. Magazine, Manthology: Poems on the Male Experience (Univ. of Iowa Press, ‘06), Morning Song: Poems for New Parents (St. Martin’s Press, ’11) and Same-Sex Marriage: The Moral and Legal Debate (Prometheus Books, ‘04), among others. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA from Bennington College. “Close Weather” appears in her recently completed first collection of poems titled Hidden Drive.

Henry C Smith is 27 years old and lives in London with his wife. He enjoys simple raw lines and among his heroes are Bukowski and Han Shan. Of today's poets he is a fan of J. Hardung and O. Bryan among others. He can be contacted at henrycsmith@hotmail.com, and would like to share with you the following quote:  "poetry is the impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind". He has just been told it, and thinks it's a good'un! Many thanks.

Mike Topp was born in Washington, DC. He is currently living in New York City unless he has died or moved. His recent books include SASQUATCH STORIES from Publishing Genius.

Brian Van Reet was born in Houston in 1981. In November, 2001, he left the University of Virginia, enlisted in the army, and was deployed to Baghdad in 2004. After returning from the war, he earned degrees in English from the University of Missouri. His fiction has appeared in several magazines, received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology, and won the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction. He lives in Austin where he is a Michener Fellow.

Along with Evergreen Review, Patrick Walsh’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and newspapers in America and around the world, including Barrow Street, Chronogram, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Hudson Review.

Margaret Zamos-Monteith earned an MFA from Brooklyn College, a Masters degree from Columbia University, and is the recipient of an NEH stipend.  Her short stories have appeared in or are forthcoming in BOMB, Fugue, Gargoyle, and Burner Magazine.

Michael Zapata is a writer and educator living in Chicago. He is a founding editor of MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine. He is also a 2008 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship recipient for Prose. Currently, he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and works at ANTIBOOKCLUB.