Emily X.R. Pan wears too many hats, including those of: a writer, a musician, a photographer, a marketing specialist, and a once-in-a-while beekeeper. She received her undergraduate degree from NYU’s Stern School of Business, which led her to pursue her fiction MFA in attempt to reclaim her sanity. She lives and works in Manhattan.

Cat Richardson has worked at Princeton University Press, Publishers Weekly, and just finished her term as the Raab Editorial Fellow at Poets & Writers. Her work has appeared in Tin House, and in various Submishmash systems across the universe. She is currently the student coordinator for the Goldwater Hospital Writing Workshop.

Sophie Herron grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, but her most recent home was Houston, Texas, where she taught high school English as a Teach For America corps member. She has interned for 826Boston, managed multiple stages, and one coffeehouse. She lives in Brooklyn.

Abba Belgrave was born in the Caribbean but has made her third home in Brooklyn and refuses to see Mamma Mia! on principle. Once an environmentalist, as a poet she recognized her crumpled, scattered drafts for the tree-killing waste they were… but could not stop. She has done nothing extraordinary as of yet.

Ben Purkert studied English at Harvard before joining forces with the cutups of Washington Square. His poems are forthcoming in Spoon River and New Orleans Review, and he writes book reviews for Harvard Review Online. Oh, and Nick Flynn saved his life. (That Mack truck was stopping for nobody…)

Eric Weinstein is the author of a collection, Vivisection, which won the 2010 New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM chapbook competition. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. He lives in New York City.

Virginia McLure has worked with The Southern Review, LSU Press, and serves as editor of the online poetry project la fovea. She  lives in Brooklyn and for food trucks.

Matthew McAlister was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky where he discovered the passions that still define his life: tennis, bourbon, and LA Gear high tops. He currently sports a fine mustache, and is browsing eBay daily for an antique whalebone cane.

Melissa Swantkowski grew up in North Carolina with three cats named Figaro. Her work has appeared in The Mississippi Review and online for American Short Fiction. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and trying to master the perfect fried egg.

Daniel Hamilton grew up in one of those towns in Massachusetts. Since then, he’s been writing and sometimes making movies in Boston, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn.

Peter Longofono is a Celan addict and he’ll be the first to tell you that. He recently moved to Queens from Lawrence, KS, and he’s currently bewildered by a summer job in advertising. What is going on with his life?

David McLoghlin is from Dublin, Ireland. In recent years his work has appeared in Irish journals such as Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, The Shop, Southword, The Stony Thursday Book, Studies, and The Stinging Fly, and in (e)L Paper, a New York-based multi-lingual publication for which he also translated fiction from Spanish to English. David has worked as a copy editor, a teacher and a translator, and has lived and traveled in Europe and North and South America. Currently a Goldwater Fellow in Creative Writing at NYU, he was Howard Nemerov Scholar at the 2011 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His chapbook was published by Blue Canary Press, and his first collection, Waiting for Saint Brendan, will be published by Salmon Poetry in May 2012.

Travis Holloway traveled the world trying to get to Albuquerque. He got sidetracked along the way. He is a poet and translator as well as a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy for a dissertation entitled “How to Perform a Democracy.”  He has studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, Lingnan University in Hong Kong, and, most recently, at the Universität Freiburg as a 2010-2011 Fulbright Scholar. He is the current facilitator for poetry at Occupy Wall Street.

Lizzie Harris was born in Sells, Arizona. She was raised in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. She currently resides in Brooklyn.

Amanda Calderon grew up in Brewster, New York, but she spent her formative years in Providence, Rhode Island. By formative years, she of course means her early twenties. Her work has appeared in Wag’s Revue. She loves the internet and has an affinity for all things post- and meta. Like everybody else, she currently lives in Brooklyn.

Amy Meng’s poetry has been published in The North Dakota Quarterly, Conte, and Literary Laundry. Favorite pastimes include eating oysters. Less favorite pastimes include causing accidental houseplant death. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

Jenny Xie recently spent three years in Asia (Hong Kong and Cambodia), where she worked as an English teacher, copywriter, and associate creative director for an ad agency. She is the recipient of the 2011 Poets & Writers Amy Award.

Curtis Rogers is from Jupiter, Florida. He is a co-curator of the Emerging Writers Reading Series at KGB Bar. He lives in New York City.

Gina Rodriguez double-majored in Spanish and English at Amherst College. She currently works part-time at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. She fills her time with writing, karate, dog walking, and volunteering at random New York events. She refuses to move out of New Jersey – for now anyway.

Marco Kaye was born in Delaware, but named after an island in Florida. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Rumpus, and The Morning News.

Julie Buntin is from Northern Michigan. She likes fiction with ghosts in it. For now, she lives in Brooklyn.

Ed Winstead is from Sanford, North Carolina. He was once said to “make Lucius Beebe look like Lucius Robinson” in a New Yorker Talk of the Town piece that he read in a dream. He lives in Brooklyn.

Mary Block is a writer living and working in New York City. She is originally from Miami, Florida. Her poetry has been featured in The Furnace Review, Poet’s Ink, Down in the Dirt, and Why I Am Not A Painter, an anthology of the work of young NYC poets. In her free time she enjoys travel, dance workouts, adult beverages, and spending time with friends.

Jakki Kerubo was born and raised in Kenya and now lives in Brooklyn. Following Jose Marti’s sage advice, she has attempted to live a complete life: she’s planted trees (yes, really); has written many books (in her mind); and has had many children (in her dreams). She hopes it all counts.