Contributor's Notes

Elizabeth Barrickman grew up in a steeltown which she romanticizes now that she's long gone. She studied drawing/sculpture and somehow manages to hold down a job that allows her to use a bit of both. She collects epitaphs and changes her own periodically. Currently, she's running with "HERE LIES ELIZABETH BARRICKMAN. SHE ALWAYS WANTED MORE".

She can be reached at elizabetz@ameritech.net

Andrew Bryan Carson lives, works, loves and creates in Chicago IL.
He enjoys singing, playing instruments, collecting conversation and writing and performing poetry.
He has been featured in various online literary journals, poetry venues, and tv and radio programs in the Illinois area. Andrew is the founder of WORDS On FIRE Poetry Forums, an online community featuring unique original poetry and art from around the world.

He can be reached at invisiblemoses@aol.com

Susan Donahue, a native of Chicago, likes to weave romantic and lyric themes into both modern and traditional poetic forms.  She has been an active member of the literary community in Lincoln, Nebraska as a regular participant in poetry readings at the Crescent Moon Coffeehouse.  Her work appeared in "Voices from the Heartland" and "Writer's on the Edge," a publication of the Writer's Wordshop in Lincoln.  Susan is a former instructor of genre fiction at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois and is currently a partner in Harris, Harris & Donahue, Ltd., a literary agency with offices in the United Kingdom and the United States. 

She can be reached at suzianne411@yahoo.com

Marci McDonald is an artist living in San Francisco, California. 

She can be reached at mmcdonald@fast.net

http://www.marcimcdonald.com

Jayne Pupek holds an MA in Counseling Psychology and lives near Richmond, Virginia. Her work has appeared in Studio One, Eidos, Prairie Dyke, and SageWoman.

She can be reached at JaynePupek@aol.com
LAUREN RAINE, MFA, has been a performance artist, visual artist, and mask maker for 25 years.  She has studied traditions of Temple mask and dance in Bali, with Ida Bagus Anom and others.  In 1999 she created 20 multi-cultural Masks of  The Goddess for THE 20TH SPIRAL DANCE in San Francisco with Starhawk and Reclaiming,  as well as choreographing  fire dances for the Spiral Dance and the Goddess 2000 Project.  In 2000 she collaborated on the production of TRAGOS, a film by Antero Alli, and was the Director of Rites of Passage Gallery, a Center for  Transformative Arts, in Berkeley, California.  She has directed and performed in many ritual theatre events, including the Masque of the Goddess at the Willits Community Center (2001) , The Masque of the Goddess at the Sebastopol Community Center (2001), the First Annual Spiral Dance of Tucson (2000),  Woman With a Thousand Faces (at the Black Box Theatre in Oakland (2002).  She has taught workshops in maskmaking in California, Arizona, and New York, and was a featured speaker at the Matrilineage Symposium at Syracuse University, Napa Community College, and many others.  She is currently working with groups who wish to create events with her Masks of the Goddess series, and is working on a book about masks and community ritual theatre. 
LAUREN RAINE
(510) 464-3031
www.rainewalker.com
laurenraine@aol.com

Sirensangha is a multimedia artist living in the Smoky Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. 

She can be reached at siren_sangha@yahoo.com

John Yates lives as far back in the woods as he can at the edge of the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania. He also has lived in very remote areas of Montana, Ontario and Alaska. His writing often is based on the power of nature to heal and transform people, and of eros as the symbol and expression of transformation and a healthy and vibrant sense of self and life. "Who I am sexually, is who I am," he said. His favorite writers include Walt Whitman, Henry Miller, Linda Hogan, Terry Tempest Williams and Lenore Kandel. He trains dogs for a living, likes to get his hands in the dirt, often is off the wall, and values intimacy and sharing in human relationships. "If you are going to be alive," he says, "do it to excess. Live, love, celebrate life and be overwhelmed by the beauty around you."

He can be reached at standingrock814@hotmail.com