Martin Phipps

Somewhere in the forests of Vancouver Island, in scenic British Columbia, Martin Phipps lives with his wife and daughter in a hilltop house whose rock-walled front-deck looks a lot like the ramparts of Elsinore. Ravens cry in the oak trees, racoons rustle in the underbrush, morning fog fills the hollows-you get the picture. Ideal as the place is for an open-air production of Hamlet-the lawn below the deck could seat 50-the author's too shy to act. (Plus there's probably by-laws.) So instead, he writes.

His fiction is forthcoming online in the Copperfield Review and the 13th Warrior Review, and is currently in ken*again, The Sidewalk's End, and elsewhere. When not earning a living (in a dairy plant, where the only culture is...you guessed it...bacterial!), or parenting, he reads Anthony Burgess, Thomas Pynchon, the Encyclopaedia Britannica; or else watches Chinese movies, especially ones starring that charming ingénue, Gong Li; and drinks litres of very strong tea; and tries not to think how old, alas, he's getting (30).

Kristy Legassie

Kristy Legassie has been writing on and off for years, as she pursued other endeavors. She has degrees in Biology and Chemistry and is currently working for Tokyo Disney Resort as a performer. But the writing bug just won't seem to go away no matter how far she tries to run from it. She just recently decided to get into the contest/publishing arena; this was the first contest she entered. And she won. Go figure.

Lynn Bey

Lynn lives and edits in Portland, Oregon and writes when she can, even when it's not raining, which is a rare event but actually does happen sometimes. She's been published in E2K, BovineFree Wyoming, broken pencil, Byline, and The First 100 Days. Currently she is gritting her teeth as she tries to write a novel.