CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

AMBERLEE CARTER

          I live a pretty quiet life here in Idaho, it's a good thing silence can inspire me. Out here, there's so much space and so many stars that one becomes speechless.

           I started writing poetry when I was around 11, during my Mother's illness. I quit school to take care of her, the only good decision I've ever made. Sadly, she lost her battle August 30th of 97. I moved directly in with my Father who was as well very ill and bed-ridden. I cared for him until his death August 5th of 99. So I lost both my parents before my 18th birthday.

         The future's looking bright though, I'm 22 now and in love with a man who inspires me beyond expression..
For the first time, in a long time,  I'm actually enjoying this life.

sinstrsidekic@hotmail.com

         FRED & LARA ELLIS are photographers living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Their photography is available for sale from galleries throughout Virginia. They also do portraits on request.

They can be contacted at: mindseye@shentel.net

          Award-winning poet, author and traditional storyteller PHILIP KANE is one of the most unique and powerful voices to emerge from North Kent's extraordinary literary and artistic scene.
 
          His work is uncompromising yet lyrical, often experimental, and always imbued with a radical spirit in the tradition of Blake and Shelley.  Philip's writings can range widely across social and political concerns, love and eroticism, and the magic that occurs when the Unconscious breaks through into everyday reality.  They also often carry a strong sense of place.
 
            Philip's publications include city's little heart (Mezzanine, 1993), The Wildwood King (Capall Bann, 1997), Tarot (Mezzanine, 2000), and Among High Waves (Urban Fox Press, 2004).  He was editor of the first, groundbreaking, North Kent anthology, The Industry of Letters (Mezzanine/KCC, 1996).  He is a frequent contributor to many magazines, and to anthologies including Six Days of Hunger (Medea/Baggins, 1998), The Medway Scene (Urban Fox Press, 2004), and New Art from North Kent (Urban Fox Press, 2004)
 
             Philip Kane currently teaches Creative Writing through adult education and the Open College.  Since 1997 he has been Writer-in-residence within the mental health services in Maidstone, Kent; and in 1999 he was the first Reader-in-residence to be appointed in South East England, at Tunbridge Wells Library.  He is a member of the London Surrealist Group, a frequent performer of his own work, and a highly experienced workshop facilitator.
 
             Philip is also a visual artist, dance teacher, trained counsellor and martial artist.  He lives in Chatham, Kent (England).
 

 

          CHRIS KORNACKI is 22 and lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada where he is currently working towards his  B.A. in philosophy.

          He has been sending out submissions to magazines for the first time ever over the past two months, and thus far have haiku forthcoming in "bottle rockets" magazine.

hobbitlover@angelfire.com

       LYN LIFSHIN's  most recent prizewinning book, (Paterson poetry award)  BEFORE IT'S LIGHT, was published winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow press, following their publication of COLD COMFORT in 1997.  ANOTHER WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE ME will be published by Black Sparrow books published by David Godine in November 2003. (ORDER@GODINE.) Also, just published is A NEW FILM BY A WOMAN IN LOVE WITH THE DEAD, March Street Press. She has published more than 100 books of
poetry, including MARILYN MONROE , BLUE TATTOO, won awards for her non fiction and edited 4 anthologies of women's writing including TANGLED VINES, ARIADNE'S THREAD, and LIPS UNSEALED.  Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of an award winning documentary film, LYN LIFSHIN: NOT MADE OF GLASS, available from Women Make Movies.  Her poem, "No More Apologizing," has been called "among the most impressive documents of the
women's poetry movement." An update to her Gale Research Projects Autobiographical series, "On The Outside, Lips, Blues, Blue Sheets" was published Spring 2003. She is working on a collection of poems about the famous, short lived beautiful race horse Ruffian, new chapbooks including GIRLS AND WOMEN and MAD GIRLS and a new collection called THERE WERE DAYS, SO PERSEPHONE. For interviews,
photographs, more bio material, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of work and more, her web site is www.lynlifshin.com
          Emmy-winner DUSTIN D. MORROW is a digital filmmaker, photographer, and writer.  He was born and raised in a rural Illinois community, where he wrote his first novel in third grade, directed his first play in fourth grade, and made his first film in seventh grade.

        In 2000, Morrow returned to the Midwest to earn his MFA in the department of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa after working for four years as an editor and director of music videos and commercials in Los Angeles.  He was the founder of the digital film festival "D:Cinema," based in Iowa City, and the director of a large-scale mounting of Stephen Belber's play "Tape," in which he integrated digital media into the traditional theatrical setting in new and interesting ways.  His short digital movies and photographs have won numerous awards and been shown in venues around the world. 

        Morrow currently works as a Visiting Assistant Professor of film and video production at Monmouth College; writes about Digital Filmmaking and New Media; and continues to produce digital movies and photo essays. Morrow's artistic goals involve utilizing this seemingly cold and impersonal technology to move audiences emotionally, to create "digital mood pieces."  He is currently in post-production on his first feature-length documentary, and he will direct two more films in the next year, in Germany and Hawaii.

        His works have screened internationally in a variety of forums, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Cornell Environmental Film Festival, the Antimatter Festival of Underground Short Film and Video, the Flicker Film Festival, the Palm
Springs International Short Film Festival, the Minnesota Fringe Theatre and Performance Festival, the Thaw Film Festival, the CSPS Contemporary Arts Center, the Drewelowe Gallery, the James F. Jakobsen Forum, the Len G. Everett Gallery (solo show set for 2005), MTV, Electric Eye Cinema, and
Living Water.

CONTACT INFO
Dustin D. Morrow
northbetrue@hotmail.com
http://digitalmoviemaker.tripod.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

        ERIC ROOT has been a photographer since age seven.  He prefers to shoot medium format but uses a Contax G-2 35mm rangefinder camera for color work, due the sharpness and contrast of the images that result from the rangefinder camera.  The majority of his work is black and white photography, but he has begun exploring color images using digital scanning and reproduction techniques.  In his mind, each medium has its own attributes, advantages and disadvantages in conveying the photographer’s vision on paper.  He maintains total control over the image creation process from shooting through development and printing to final mounting of the image.

         In general, he prefers black and white photographs because they are one step removed from our normal vision and perception process, a level of abstraction that triggers our subconscious.  This level of abstraction reveals certain elements, or brings them to the surface, so that the viewer’s perception is altered and open to the depth of the image and all it has to offer. 

          Eric Root often refers to a line in the movie American Beauty:  “Sometimes there is so much beauty that it hurts”.  His photographs attempt to bring into awareness all that is special around us each day, our friends, our families, our environmental surroundings, life.  His photographs attempt to capture the lines and forms of nature and the human body, powerful elements that at innate to all of us as human beings.  His portraits attempt to capture that unspoken quality that says, “this is what is special about this person… this captures their soul”.

           Eric Root (alias DILLID: Dark into Light… Light into Dark) explores both the dark and light sides to life, knowing that one cannot exist without the other, that each is a mirror to the other.  His themes purposely provoke the viewer to look within, to access the full spectrum of life.

           He is currently exploring high resolution digital color panorama images using a Kaidan QuickPan Magnum tripod head, PTGui stitching softwaare, PhotoShop, Nikon Coolscan 8000 scanner, Epson 2200 archival ink printer.  Some of his panoramas involve digital stitching and manipulation of up to ten images.

           Eric Root has a studio in Leavenworth, Washington.

Contact Info:
Leavenworth, WA  98826
(509) 548-0243
ecroot@earthlink.net
www.EricRoot.com

          CHRIS TOLIAN is one of those people constantly searching for things that he doesn't yet understand. Finding muses makes him blissfully happy. He is intrigued by people and forever trying to connect. He can be found mostly around Chicago looking for that quiet place between the city and serendipity where the wild things dance and the sidewalk ends.

      He has been published with Clean Sheets and Slow Trains Literary Journal.  He has most recently found a home here, among the contributors and editors of The Divine Animal (featured March 2004).  He is currently spewing various short stories and attempting a novel or two.  Mostly he works and raises beautiful little gypsy girls.  Ah, it should be mentioned that he is a militant member of the Bastinadoes. 

        The meaning of the previous statement, and any other bleatings uttered by him for that matter, should be taken with a large dose of skepticism… maybe.

         His email is: christopher_2031@hotmail.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