RON MOHRING's poetry and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals, including The Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, The James White Review, Evergreen Chronicles, Puerto del Sol, and West Branch, and in the second "Poets for Life" anthology, Things Shaped in Passing (Persea Books). His chapbook, Amateur Grief, was selected by Maureen Seaton for the 1998 Frank O'Hara Prize, and his manuscript, "Survivable World," was a finalist in the 1999 Anhinga Poetry Prize competition. He received his B.A. from the University of Houston and M.F.A. from Vermont College of Norwich University, and currently lives in metro Louisville, on the "wrong" side of the Ohio River, in Indiana. Ron welcomes email at MohringR@aol.com.

ALDO ALVAREZ's short fiction has seen print in The ARK/Angel Review, Pen & Sword Hypersite, The Blue Moon Review/Blue Penny Quarterly, Amelia, Art & Understanding, GayPlace Magazine, Christopher Street, CONTRA/DICTION: New Queer Male Fiction (Arsenal Pulp Press) and BEST AMERICAN GAY FICTION 1 (Little, Brown/Back Bay Books). He received a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University in the city of New York. Currently a Clifford D. Clark Fellow at Binghamton University, he teaches and pursues a Doctorate in English. He was a Fiction Scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 1998. His collection of short stories, INTERESTING MONSTERS, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.

J.G. HAYES is a writer and landscaper living in the Boston area. His work has appeared in Men on Men 2000 and Bar Stories, an Alyson Publications anthology published in December 1999. He has just completed a collection of short stories set in South Boston, of which "This Thing Called Courage" is one. He can be reached at jghayes@attbi.com.

ROBIN LIPPINCOTT is the author of a book of stories, The Real, True Angel (Fleur-de-Lis Press) and the Lambda Book Award-nominated novella, Mr. Dalloway (Sarabande Books). His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The American Voice, The New York Times Book Review, The Literary Review, Christopher Street, Provincetown Arts, and many other magazines. His new novel, Our Arcadia, will be published by Viking in April 2001.

KRISTY NIELSEN (nielsen@concentric.net) has published work Spoon River Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Mid-American Review, Literal Latte, The Madison Review and other journals. Her two novel manuscripts are in search of a publisher. She was born in Detroit and currently live in the San Francisco Bay area, but has yet to experience an earthquake.

JOE PETTIGREW lives north of Boston and teaches English as a second language. This is his first published story. (Actually, it's the first thing he's written that's been read by more than a dozen people.)

ROB PHELPS (robphelps@mediaone.net) lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He works part time as a graphic designer for the Advocate newspaper, freelance edits, and writes fiction. His short story, "Auction," won first prize for fiction in Ex Libris, the literary magazine at Boston University.

Though he writes a lot about Hawaii, NEIL PLAKCY (plax@gate.net) actually lives in Miami, Florida. He has completed two mystery novels featuring Kimo in his capacity as a Honolulu police detective, and hopes they'll someday be seen between hard covers. To learn more about Kimo, you can visit Neil's web site, http://members.icanect.net/~plax/home.html, where you can read the first chapter of Mahu, Kimo's first mystery. Neil received his MFA in creative writing from Florida International University, and his work has been published in Men Seeking Men: Adventures in Gay Personals, from Painted Leaf Press, and in My First Time 2, from Alyson Publications.

AUDREY BETH STEIN's fiction and essays have appeared in Jewish Education News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Local Access, Outlines, Chavurah, and other publications. Her photography has graced the cover of Passport Magazine and the walls of a University of Pennsylvania dining hall. She has occasionally been found wandering the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, singing nonsensical phrases and accompanying herself on an out-of-tune guitar. She receives e-mail at abstein@force.stwing.upenn.edu; her web site is http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~abstein.