Dean Borok
Dean Borok was born in Texas, where he was orphaned at a young age. He was adopted by a family of iguanas that lived in a crack in the foundation of the Waco, Texas, public library. One day, while he was sunning himself on a rock, he was befriended by a kind librarian named Carmina Burana, who taught him how to read and introduced him to the literature of Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. Their friendship soon blossomed into love, but she was tragically killed in a skydiving accident, having forgotten to put on her parachute. Dean moved to New York, where he got a job as a meatpacker, taking an extension course in gynecology from Larry Flynt University, but he had to go on disability for overusing the muscles in his right hand. He makes his living as an organgrinder's monkey in the Times Square subway station and continues to write in the evenings, using his left hand.
Humor: Yussel Rotten, Punk Rabbi, Steve McQueen's in Motorcycle Heaven

Eric S. Brown
Eric S. Brown is the author of DYING DAYS. Check out this new paperback today from Silver Lake Publishing. He is also the author of Space Stations and Graveyards. Both will be available on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com soon. He is mainly a short story author, though, with over 200 published works in the last two and half years. He turns 29 early in 2004 and lives in North Carolina with his loving wife, Shanna.
Essay: The Horror of the Supernatural

Tamara Calidad
Tamara stays up late and gets up early and still gets nothing done.
Cutting: School Spirit

Jeannette Cezanne
Jeannette Cezanne lives in Boston, where she writes articles, video scripts, and business collateral for corporate clients, and edits a wide range of fiction and nonfiction for individuals and publishers. She is a monthly columnist for Doll Reader magazine and -- yes -- the most difficult challenge of her life continues to be her role as a stepmother. She is currently working on a book about that experience, tentatively titled "Wicked."
Essay: Count Your Blessings

Jessica Cockrell
Of "Lady in Red," Jessica writes, "As do most lovers of great horror stories, I often find myself wondering, 'Art ghosts real?' I came closest to answering this question ten years ago when a friend persuaded me to join her in the old slumber party favorite: calling 'Bloody Mary' into the mirror three times. Though the devlish lady never appeared to us, I was afraid to be alone for months. The memory of this lingering fear inspired me to write this story, a tale about a woman who never doubts the existence of the supernatural after a childhood encounter with the terrible lady in red."
Fiction: Lady in Red

Amanda Cornwell
Wild Violet webmaster and art editor Amanda Cornwell is a highly suffanciacated multimedia artist and computer junkie -- coexisting with her computer and art supplies somewhere in Maryland... for more exploration of her cranium visit www.geocities.com/suffanciacator.
Artwork: Formula, Gemini Love

Rada Djurica
Radmila Djurica is a Serbian freelance journalist who has done correspondence work for the Tiker Press Agency and has had articles published in British Sunday and daily newspapers, including the Scottish newspaper, Sunday Post; in Woman Abroad magazine; and at Storyhouse.org. She has served as assistant editor, reading manuscripts for the Reading Writers Service; has published articles with the SCN Television Network in California; is a freelance columnist for the British monthly magazine Code Uncut; and wrote about Serbia's International Bitef Festival of contemporary theatre for Zowie Wowie Magazine, an American e-zine.
Reviews: "Hair" at the Pula Film Festival, Placebo concert

Cara Edmundson
Cara once saw a ghost sneaking around the corner of a hallway in a dark building. Or did she?
Cutting: Ghostly Questions

Richard Fein
Richard Fein has been published in many print and web journals. He is also interested
in digital photography and has two personal web sites on which he's pasted samples of his work. Poems are here and photos are here.
Poem: Questions About Freeing the Mind from the Body

Carol Hamilton
Carol Hamilton was the poet laureate of Oklahoma from 1995-1997 and received the Oklahoma Book Award for her chapbook of poetry, Once the Dust. She received a Southwest Book Award in 1988 for a children's novel, The Dawn Seekers. She has been published widely. Her most recent books include Breaking Bread, Breaking Silence; Gold: Greatest Hits; I, People of the Llano; and I'm Not from Neptune.
Poem: Trauma

G. Kumar
G. Kumar is a writer, astrologer and programmer who has 25 years research experience in the esoteric arts. He has a scientific and philosophic background and he set up an astrology website in 1999 to provide astrological service to mankind. He has written more than 50 e-articles on New Age subjects and has compiled six e-books as well as software in Astro Science. He invites e-mail.
Essay: New Age: A Paradigm Shift to Divine Consciousness and a Universal Philosophy

Mary Matus
Mary is an aspiring Dave Barry/aspiring Stephen King (and will acknowledge the weirdness of that combination) who has lived all her life in rural PA (otherwise known as the Land of Cows and Corn.) When not writing, she works as a typesetter in the composing departments of three newspapers (leading to the occasional confusion.) She was once a reporter for Standard-Journal Newspapers and still occasionally writes for the Luminary, a weekly newspaper in Muncy, PA. She is a 1999 graduate of Susquehanna University, where she received a bachelor of arts in English literature and journalism and was active in The Crusader student newspaper. She has recently been published in the online magazine Wilmington Blues. In her free time, she is an avid bookworm, reading anything ranging from Toni Morrison to Dean Koontz.
Essay: Top Ten Halloween Movies
Review: Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Rochelle Hope Mehr
Rochelle Hope Mehr lives in New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in TYPO Magazine, xStream, Poetry Life & Times, The Rose & Thorn, Poems Niederngasse and other publications.
Poem: Possession

John O'Toole
John O'Toole was born and lived most of his life in Chicago. He recently moved to Los Angeles, where he now works as Rare Books and Manuscripts Cataloger at the University of Southern California. His stories have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Detective Mystery Stories, Pindeldyboz and Muse Apprentice Guild, in which his novel Loftus is currently being serialized. He studied playwriting at Chicago Dramatists Workshop, where three of his plays were produced. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals here and in Ireland.
Fiction: The Dead, and God Bless Them

Dan Pettee
Dan Pettee is a native New Englander who currently operates his own freelance writing business. He has had poems published in a wide range of publications, including Chicago Review, Texas Review, Amherst Review, Descant, Negative Capability and Cape Rock Journal.
Poem: Third Period

Mike Ryan
Wild Violet proof reader Mike Ryan has a distressingly common name. He's not the lawyer or pharmaceutical salesman or the pool club owner. He's the information services manager. The one that loves anime and science fiction. No, not the one from New York, the one from Pennsylvania. Yeah, that one.

Chuck Shandry
Chuck Shandry, former Navy Photographer and rabid anime fan, fondly remembers the days of "Speed Racer" and "Kimba, the White Lion." Currently, he attends and helps out at Katsucon, since '96, and Otakon since '95, two anime conventions held on the East Coast of the U.S. (in Baltimore, Maryland). He lives in York, Pennsylvania, and tries to blend reality (a job) and fantasy (anime) as much as possible. Getting too old to admit his true age, he nonetheless tries to spread the word of Japanese animation at every opportoon-ity.
Probe: Danny Valentini

Tom Sheehan
Tom Sheehan lives in Saugus, Massachusetts, and has been retired for 12 years. He has authored the novels Vigilantes East (2002), and An Accountable Death, now serialized on 3 AM Magazine, and co-edited the sold-out 2,500-copy edition of A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900-2000. He won East of The Web's 2002 nonfiction competition and has more than 150 appearances online. His work appears in Tryst, Fiction Warehouse, The Paumanok Review, StorySouth, Three Candles, Small Spiral Notebook, Pierian Springs, Pindeldyboz and Literary Potpourri, among others. In 2001 he met with four comrades he had not seen since 1951 in Korea.
Fiction: Also Grave Robber

Rachael Silvers
The first time Rachael was ever published was in a local newspaper, which printed her poem about daffodils.
Cutting: The Blob

Steven Ray Smith
Steven Ray Smith lives in Austin with his exciting wife and two beautiful children. His work has been published in Aura Literary Arts Review, Los Contemporary Poesy and Art, Map of Austin Poetry and Parnassus Literary Journal. He is an imaginer by nature, writer by ambition, and business executive by accident. He writes daily religiously on his lunch hour, and reads snippets of poetry in the elevator between meetings. Other times, he's a road cyclist, fisherman and poker player.
Poem: Scienter

Terry Thomas
Terry Thomas is a Scorpio so doesn't miss much of what occurs; therefore, the world is not just a stage but a page waiting to be scripted in a reduced fashion. If a novel is the redwood forest, chipped into chapters, etc..., then a poem is a bonzai tree, constructed into pleasurable or painful abbreviation.
Poem: Dreams as Doorways to Devilry Deliberate Deliverance or Death

Sarah Watson
In a former life, Sara was a lazy, fat cat sitting on a windowsill, watching the rain.
Cutting: Devil Drink

Alyce Wilson
Alyce Wilson is the editor of Wild Violet and has never run for governor of California. In her copious spare time, she keeps an online journal, Musings.
Reviews: Blues for Bird by Martin Gray, Withdrawal by Michael Hoffman, A Light in the Window by J. Elizabeth Harris, Tortured Eves by November Coffey

D. Harlan Wilson
D. Harlan Wilson’s fiction has appeared in a number of American, British and Australian magazines and anthologies, most recently in Identity Theory, Jack Magazine, The Offbeat, The Café Irreal, The Dream People, Thunder Sandwich, Nemonymous, Horrorfind, Muse Apprentice Guild and 3 A.M. Magazine. He has published two books, The Kafka Effekt and 4 Ellipses, and his third book, Stranger on the Loose, will be out soon. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Visit his official web site.
Fiction: Sponge

Mary Jarrett Wilson
Mary Jarrett Wilson admires fragmentary writers, homonyms, and dogs who stick their heads out of windows when they ride in cars. She enjoys breaking the rules of grammar, although she aims to avoid the adjective pile-up. She lives in Vermont with her husband and dog, and is working on her first novel.
Humor: Othello for the 21st Century

Gerald Zipper
Gerald Zipper's work has been published in a great many literary journals. Wounded Hopes, a collection of his poetry, was published in 1987. In 2002, he was named one of the state's top poets by The Journal of New Jersey Poets. He has been featured on National Public Radio and has lectured on writing poetry at the New School in New York City. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize Award.
Poetry: The Sun and the Stars, A Stone on My Head