EDWIN TORRES started creating text and performance work in 1988 under the banner "I.E. Interactive Eclecticism," an invented 'movement' whose purposefully broad term gave his one-man variety shows a forum, e.g. I.E. Songs, I.E. Dances and I.E. Costumes were interspersed with audience interaction. In 1990, he discovered poetry at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe and The St. Marks Poetry Project and poems evolved out of what were then I.E. Monologues. He has since collaborated with a wide range of artists, creating performances that mingle poetry with vocal/physical improvisation, visual theater, music and sound. His media assault includes MTV's first “Spoken Word Unplugged,” Rolling Stone Magazine, High Times, and has traveled the world, performing at many festivals, cafe's, classrooms and beaches; as well as taught workshops and performed across the United States and overseas. He is a recipient of poetry fellowships from The Foundation For Contemporary Performance Art, the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and The Poetry Fund and his CD “Holy Kid” was part of The Whitney Museum's exhibition, The American Century Pt. II.

RENATO ROSALDO is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at New York University. He is Chicano of Mexican descent and grew up in Tucson, Arizona. He received his B.A. in Spanish History and Literature and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University. He has been President of the American Ethnological Society, Director of the Stanford Center for Chicano Research, Chair of the Stanford Department of Anthropology, and was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His books include Ilongot Headhunting, 1883-1974 (1980) and Culture and Truth (1989) was has been translated to Korean, Italian and Spanish. He was formed as a poet through the Waverly Writers, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers since 2000, and with Mexican poet Raul Aceves. He was awarded first prize in the contest for literary excellence in poetry awarded by El Andar magazine in the year 2000. His book of poetry, Prayer to Spider Woman (2004), was selected as a winner of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award for 2004.

LOURDES VÁZQUEZ is one the best contemporary writers of Puerto Rico and winner of the International Juan Rulfo Short Story Award, 2002 (France). Among her latest books are: Sin ti no soy yo (Puerto, 2005), La estatuilla (Cultural, 2004), Bestiary, (Bilingual Review Press, 2004), finalist of the Foreword Book of the Year Award 2004, May the Travesties of my island (Belladona, 2004), Salmos del cuerpo ardiente (Chihuahua Arde, 2004), Hablar sobre Julia (SALALM, 2002), and Park Slope (Duration Press, 2003.) In 1999 Historias de Pulgarcito (Cultural) and De identidades: bibliografía y filmografía de María Luisa Bemberg (SALALM) were published. In 1988 the Omar Rayo Museum of Colombia published La Rosa mecánica in their plaquette series of women poets of Latin America. In 1990 her biography of Marina Arzola [the Puerto Rican poet] (Gallo Rojo) was published in a limited edition designed by artist Consuelo Gotay and it was listed by the Puerto Rican critics as one of the ten books of the year. In 1991, a new edition of La Rosa mecánica was published by Huracán (San Juan). Her book of poems Las Hembras (Papeles del Andalicán, Chile, 1987) was listed by the Puerto Rican critics as one of the ten best books of the year. Her short stories, essays and poetry have been widely published in anthologies, journals and newspapers in the USA and abroad.

MANUEL MUÑOZ is the author of Zigzagger (Northwestern University Press), a short story collection, published in 2003. His work has appeared in Colorado Review, Boston Review, Epoch, Swink, Glimmer Train and other journals, and is forthcoming in Rush Hour. His second collection of short stories will be published in 2007 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Born and raised in Dinuba, California, Muñoz graduated from Harvard University and received his MFA in creative writing at Cornell University. He lives in New York City, where he is at work on a novel.

MAHINA MOVEMENT is an emerging artists' collective and producing theatre commited to provoking new ways of experiencing art, politics, and life. Mahina, taken from the Tongan word for moon and the Spanish to "to imagine," explores creative means to reframe our consciousness as individuals and members of a larger society. Through images, stories, and words, Mahina Movement seeks to engender new ideas, reshaping possibilities within our social reality. Bringing the traditional disciplines of painting, sculpture, and photography out of defined spaces and infusing them with dance, theatre, music and spoken word, Mahina implodes categories and puts art in an active dialogue with diverse audiences.

KAREN JAIME is a New York based spoken word/performance artist, cultural activist and writer. Her fiery delivery and in your face style has been gracing audiences since she first put pen to paper at Cornell University where she received a B.A. in History and Spanish Literature with a concentration in Latin American Studies. She first slammed at the Café in 1998 and took a self-imposed break before returning in 2000 to co-produce/perform (w/ Felice Belle) in spoken word/performance events such as "Sex and Revolution" and "This Woman’s Work." She has also performed at the Bottom Line, DUMBA, Café Largo, Bluestockings Women’s Bookstore, among others, and at colleges throughout the northeast. Karen has hosted and performed for Arcos’ Entertainment’s spoken word/performance events "Women of Word," "Supreme Poets" and "Voices Around The Square." In the summer of 2002, she performed and co-produced "The Mystique of Fly" in the Queer@HERE theater festival held at HERE Theater. She is currently working on her spoken word anthology and her one-womyn show while also completing her graduate studies in New York University’s Department of Performance Studies.

SERGIO TRONCOSO'S first book, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, won the Premio Aztlán and the Southwest Book Award. His second book, The Nature of Truth, is a novel about righteousness and evil, Yale and the Holocaust. His stories have been featured in The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (W.W. Norton), Once Upon a Cuento (Curbstone Press), City Wilds: Stories and Essays about Urban Nature (University of Georgia Press), Revista Tierra Adentro: Cuentario (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes: Mexico City), and New World: Young Latino Writers (Dell). Troncoso graduated from Harvard College, and studied international relations and philosophy at Yale University, where he teaches a fiction-writing workshop during the summer. In New York City, he serves on the board of directors of the Hudson Valley Writers' Center.

URAYOÁN NOEL was born in 1976 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and has lived in New York City since 1999. He is the author of three books of poetry: Las flores del mall (Alamala, 2000), Boringkén (Ediciones Vértigo, forth.), and Kool Logic / La lógica kool (Bilingual Press, forth.). He has published poetry, fiction, essays, translations, rock criticism, parodies, horoscopes, manifestos, dithyrambs, and digressive ephemera in journals, periodicals, and anthologies in the USA, Puerto Rico, and assorted elsewheres. In collaboration with composer/multi-instrumentalist Monxo López, he has produced a performance DVD entitled Kool Logic Sessions: Poems, Pop Songs, Laugh Tracts (Bilingual Press, forth.). A graduate of the University of Puerto Rico (Río Piedras) and Stanford University, he is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University and lead vocalist for the rock band objet petit a. He lives, writes, and rocks north of Harlem.