Polly Bee: Ojai poet for whom writing poetry is a high equal only to that of riding a mule down the Grand Canyon or flying in a helicopter nose-to-nose with Mt. Denali.

Steve Beisner is a writer, musician, and computer scientist. He has published short stories and poems, and was recognized for his short fiction by the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 2005 and 2006. He is currently writing a novel. Steve is an editor at Ink Byte Press and co-edits Ink Byte, a magazine for writers at http://inkbyte.com.

Mary Brown’s poems have appeared in numerous journals. In 2007, she was named as a finalist for the Ekphrasis Poetry Prize. Her manuscript, It's Love That Pushes Stockings Down, was chosen as a semi-finalist for the 2008 Perugia Press Prize. She received an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles.

Chella Courington is a teaching poet at Santa Barbara City College. Her poetry has appeared recently in Touchstone, Dark Sky Magazine, Prism Review, Studio and SUB-LIT. Her second chapbook entitled How to Teach Grammar was a runner-up in the Main Street Rag Chapbook Competition 2008.

Pamela Davis is a poet who moved to Santa Barbara after a career as a journalist, editor, and nonfiction author. She reads her poetry annually at Shakespeare & Company in Paris. Pamela belongs to the Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective and helped organize the Independent Writers of Southern California.

Carol DeCanio’s poetry, a broadside and accordion book, is available in letterpress limited editions. She is collaborating with Lettre Sauvage of Santa Paula to bring out a chapbook of 10 poems. She has had exhibits of her photography, presented programs of poetry and song, and she organizes poetry events in Santa Barbara.

Marsha de la O’s first book of poetry, Black Hope, won the New Issues Press Poetry Prize and a Small Press Editor’s Choice Award. She lives in Ventura, California where she is co-editor for the literary journal, Askew. She is currently working on a novel.

A.J. Ford's poems have been widely published in the Bay Area, in Ojai's Rivertalk and in Pearl Magazine. She is the recipient of the Ohio Award for Outstanding Poetry.

Suzanne Frost is the editor & publisher of Sage Trail Poetry Magazine (www.sagetrail.net) and currently directs the Poetry Zone reading series at the Karpeles in Santa Barbara. She has an MA in English/Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico (UNM), and has published three chapbooks and numerous poems of non-fiction.

Lois Klein has published a chapbook, Naming Water, and a full-length volume of poetry, A Soldier's Daughter (Turning Point, 2008). Her work has appeared in numerous national journals. Lois organizes the monthly Favorite Poems Project readings, is on the faculty of the SB Poetry Conference, and teaches through California Poets in the Schools.

Christine Kravetz’s poetry has been published widely in a variety of journals including Slant, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, and Poem. Her short story, “Margie” appears in the NPR anthology, I Thought My Father Was God. She teaches in Santa Barbara schools and is Vice President of California Poets in the Schools.

Perie Longo, is on the board of this year’s Book & Author Festival and co-chair of the poetry events. She is honored to be poet laureate of Santa Barbara 2007-2009. As such, she loves writing poems for various citywide events and meeting many talented poets and others who share her love of the art.

Enid Osborn has 4 chapbooks and is working on a full-length collection of poems plus her first collection of short stories. Much of her writing draws upon her early life experience in southeastern New Mexico. She has lived in Santa Barbara for 27 years but hardly ever writes about it.

Melinda Palacio is a 2007 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow. She grew up in South-Central Los Angeles and now lives in Santa Barbara where she is an editor for Ink Byte. Her poems, short stories, and articles have appeared in a variety of publications. More of her work can be viewed at http://www.melindapalacio.com.

Kelly Peinado lives in Santa Barbara, writes poetry, and teaches at Ventura Community College.

John Ridland taught literature and writing at UCSB for forty years. In retirement he is writing poems and translating from Hungarian with Peter Czipott. Some of their work has been published in Harper's, Literary Imagination, and PN Review. His last book was A Brahms Card Ballad: Poems Selected for Hungarians.

Sojourner Kincaid Rolle writes and performs poetry that is both introspective and reflective. She is the author of six chapbooks and six of her short plays have been produced on stage. Her most recent poem, Under A Sea Blue Sky, was published in Essential Poems (InkByte Press, 2007)

Kathleen Roxby's work has appeared in Art/Life, PMS, Sage Trail, and anthologies Electric Rain, Letters from the Soul, and Mischief, Caprice, and Other Poetic Strategies. She hosts Soap Box Poets in Goleta, frequently is contest judge for the California Federation of Chaparral Poets and was Associate Editor for Poetry Forum.

Barry Spacks, Santa Barbara's first Poet Laureate, has published various novels, stories, three poetry-reading CDs and ten poetry collections while teaching literature and writing for years at M.I.T. & U C Santa Barbara. His tenth book of poems, Food For The Journey, appeared from Cherry Grove Collections in August 2008.

David Starkey hosts the local television program The Creative Community and directs the creative writing program at Santa Barbara City College. His collections of poetry include Starkey’s Book of States, Adventures of the Minor Poet, Ways of Being Dead: New and Selected Poems, and Fear of Everything.

Phil Taggart is co-editor, with Marsha de la O, of the Askew poetry journal. He’s had several poems published recently in Solo Café’s 8 Central Coast Poets Look at The World and Bear Flag Republic, Prose Poems & Poetics. His poetry book, Opium Wars, was published by Mille Grazie Press.

Beth Taylor-Schott has a doctorate from UC Berkeley and has taught at Berkeley, USC, and UCSB. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She works as a Poet in the Schools, teaches non-fiction through Adult Education, and writes for the /Santa Barbara Independent/.

Paul J. Willis is a professor of English at Westmont College. His most recent collection of poetry is Visiting Home (Pecan Grove Press, 2008). With David Starkey, he co-edited the anthology In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (University of Iowa Press, 2005).

Jackson Wheeler is the author of two collections Swimming Past Iceland (Mille Grazie Press, 1993) and A Near Country: Poems of Loss (Solo Press, 1999) with Glenna Luschei, and David Oliveira. He co-edited SOLO: A Journal of Poetry for 10 years. Since 1990 he has hosted a reading series now housed at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, California.

Chryss Yost is a poet and editor of two major anthologies, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present and Poetry Daily: A Year of Poems. She teaches at the Granada’s Music & Arts Conservatory and the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference Poetry Weekend. www.chryssyost.net