Neal Pollack

JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN is an Associate Professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York and an instructor in the graduate writing program at New School University. He is the author of two books, Harbors and Spirits, a collection of poems, and the novel Rails Under My Back, which won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction.

JIM ARNDORFER was born and raised in Milwaukee. He now lives on the far North Side of Chicago—in broadcast range of the Packers Radio Network—with his wife and son. He has attended four Packers-Bears games and the teams have split. He is a reporter for Advertising Age and a contributor to The Baffler.

DANIEL BUCKMAN is the author of Water in Darkness, The Names of Rivers, and Morning Dark. His fourth novel, Wet Trees, is forthcoming in 2006. A former paratrooper and journalist, Buckman lives and works in Chicago.

TODD DILLS hails originally from Rock Hill, South Carolina, but desertion is sweet release: He has called Chicago his home for these past years. He is editor and publisher of THE2NDHAND, a broadsheet and online magazine (the2ndhand.com) for new writing. His stories, reviews, and erratta have appeared in numerous publications, including the Chicago Reader, where he also works.

ANDREW ERVIN lives in downstate Illinois. His stories have appeared in the Prague Literary Review and Night Rally. He has also contributed reviews, articles, and essays to the New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post Book World, Chicago Tribune, The Believer, and other places.

ALEXAI GALAVIZ-BUDZISZEWSKI was born and raised in Pilsen on the South Side of Chicago. He has published numerous stories in journals such as Triquarterly, Ploughshares, and the Alaska Quarterly Review. He still lives and works on the South Side of Chicago.

LUCIANO GUERRIERO, a contributor to Akashic’s Brooklyn Noir, recently completed his first noir novel, The Spin. His fourth play, Fireman’s Dance, will be produced in New York City in the fall of 2005. Luciano has acted in or directed seventy-five plays, and has appeared in twenty Hollywood and independent films, and in many television shows.

KEVIN GUILFOILE’S first novel, Cast of Shadows, was published this year by Knopf. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife and son.

ADAM LANGER is the author of the novels Crossing California and The Washington Story. He divides his time between New York City and Bloomington, Indiana.

Daniel Sinker

JOE MENO is a fiction writer from Chicago and winner of a Nelson Algren Literary Award. His latest novel, Hairstyles of the Damned, follows the exploits of adolescents as they struggle for belonging on Chicago’s South Side. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Punk Planet magazine, another 2nd-city landmark.

Phillip Cantor

MICHAEL K. MEYERS is a writer and performance artist. His fiction has been published in the New Yorker, and his performance work has been presented around the world, including at MoMA, Tel Aviv Museum, and Warsaw Institute of Contemporary Art. He teaches in the M.F.A. Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and lives in Evanston, Illinois. He is the recipient of numerous arts fellowships.

ACHY OBEJAS was born in Cuba and grew up in Indiana, looking across Lake Michigan at Chicago and thinking it was her own Emerald City. The author of three books, including the critically acclaimed Days of Awe, she currently lives in Kenwood, on the South Side, and teaches at the University of Chicago.

BAYO OJIKUTU was born and raised in greater Chicago. He is the son of folks who migrated to the city from West Africa (Lagos, Nigeria) and the Deep South (Shreveport, Louisiana). Ojikutu’s first novel, 47th Street Black (Three Rivers Press, 2003), won the Washington Prize for Fiction and the Great American Book Award. His second novel, Free Burning, will be released in 2006. Currently, Ojikutu teaches in the Department of English at DePaul University, Chicago.

PETER ORNER was born at Michael Reece Hospital in Chicago. His first book, Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Goldberg Prize for fiction. His novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, will be published in 2006.

NEAL POLLACK worked as a reporter for the Chicago Reader from 1993–2000, where he wrote the “Petty Crime” column, among many other assignments. He’'s the author of three books of satire, including the cult-classic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature and the rock-n-roll novel Never Mind the Pollacks. He is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair and Nerve. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.

AMY SAYRE-ROBERTS lives in Springfield, Illinois with one beautiful husband and two talented Malamutes (both born in Chicago). Her work has appeared in the American Book Review and the Alchemist Review.