Jessica Goldfinch
Jessica Goldfinch growing up in an urban commune in 1970s New Orleans, she was exposed to unconventional worldviews from a very early age. From her elementary school years at the countercultural Free School through her graduate studies at the University of New Orleans, she focused on studying world ideologies and creatively incorporating them into her art. Her artistic curiosity has led her to travel to places as diverse as Nicaragua, Indonesia, and central India, and she has frequently incorporated both iconographic elements and an Asian sense of balance in her work. Raised as a Secular Humanist but schooled in many other religions from her upbringing, academic studies, and travels, she is fascinated with blind faith as well as religious artwork from an outsider’s perspective. Religious views of mortality infuse her work, and are often framed in scientific depictions of issues of life and death. Since 2000, her artwork has been exhibited in dozens of venues, including museums, universities, art centers, and galleries, in New Orleans and the Gulf South as well as in New York City, Washington DC, and Europe. She maintains her studio and home in New Orleans.
Harriet Sohmers Zwerling
is an eighty year old woman, fifties expatriate, writer, translator, teacher, and mother of the funk musician, MiloZ. Her collection of stories, Notes of A Nude Model, was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2003. Her work has appeared in the anthology The Bold New Women issued by Fawcett, the Brooklyn Rail in 2006, and as an afterword in Alfred Chester’s novel Jamie Is My Heart’s Desire, in little mags such as Raritan and Provincetown Review. She translated Les Infortunes de la Vertu of the Marquis de Sade for Obelisk Press.
Carol Westberg
her first collection of poems, Slipstream, will be published in 2010. A former teacher and editor, she currently directs communications at Vermont Law School and lives with her partner in Hanover, New Hampshire. She earned a BA from Duke, MAT from Stanford, and MFA from Vermont College.
Leslie Ullman
her latest book, Slow Work Through Sand, winner of the 1997 Iowa Poetry Prize, came out in 1998. Her first collection of poems, Natural Histories (Yale, 1978), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Her second collection, Dreams by No One’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), was part of the Pitt Poetry Series. Her poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, The Writer’s Chronicle, and Kenyon Review. She is the recipient of two NEA Fellowships and has taught at Vermont College since 1981.