About the Authors:

Donn Taylor
A career Army officer, Donn Taylor led an Infantry rifle platoon in Korea, served with Army aviation in Vietnam, and worked with air reconnaissance and intelligence collection in Europe and Asia. Afterwards, he taught English literature at two liberal arts colleges. He and his wife now live near Houston, where he writes fiction, poetry, and articles on current topics.

Omar S. Pound
OMAR SHAKESPEAR POUND is an Anglo-American, educated at Charterhouse, England, where one of his ancestors, William Makepeace Thackeray, went, who also detested the place. He served in the U.S. Army (in France and Germany), received an A.B. from Hamilton College, did graduate work at the Institute of Islamic Studies (McGill University), and also attended the London School of Oriental and African Studies and the University of Tehran as a guest-student of the Iranian Government-his main studies throughout being Persian, Arabic, Islamic history, and Anthropology. He taught at the Roxbury Latin School in Boston for five years, after which he went to North Africa to run a school. Thereafter, he taught at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology in Cambridge, England, before moving with his wife Elizabeth to the United States to teach at Princeton University, from which he recently retired. He is currently editing letters written during the Sepoy War, or the Indian Mutiny (1857).

Cynthia Leal Massey
Cynthia Leal Massey is on the English adjunct faculty at San Antonio College. Prior positions include work as an editor and writer at Southwest Research Institute, an industrial research and development corporation; and as a correspondent for a major San Antonio newspaper. Her fiction has appeared in the national magazine, Cricket, and in New Texas 2000, an anthology of works by Texas authors. She is also the author of the award-winning Fire Lilies, a novel of the Mexican Revolution. She says, "I write for the descendants of the half-million immigrants who sought a new home here because of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 as much as for myself-a third-generation American of Mexican descent." The Caballeros of Ruby, Texas is a continuation of the drama that unfolds in Fire Lilies. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Cynthia now lives in a small town northwest of the city with her husband and two children.

Jeana Kendrick
Jeana Kendrick is managing editor for the DOOR OF HOPE MAGAZINE as well as communications director overseeing the quality and on-time production of Door of Hope International's USA and Canadian publishing concerns. Her work has appeared in various newspapers and books, recently in Fall From Innocence, Page One Publications, Suddenly, and Suddenly II, Martin House Publications. She is at work on her second contemporary novel of international intrigue.

Wm. Anthony Connolly
Wm. Anthony Connolly was educated at the University of Winnipeg, Red River College and holds a Masters of Creative Writing degree from Goddard College, Vermont. He teaches English and writing at North Harris College. He is a published poet, essayist, short story writer and playwright and has received writing awards in the United States and Canada. He works as a journalist for the on-line international news site, CountryWatch.com, based in Houston. Panther Creek Press is publishing his debut novel, "The Jenny Muck." He has a short story collection "The Naked Sea," a collection of essays "Conversations With My Cat," and a poetry collection, "jesusjazzjunk." He is now writing his fifth novel, "Thawing Grace." NeWest Press in Alberta, Canada is considering his novella, "Get Back" for publication. He lives in Texas with his wife, Dyan; Jigsaw The Wonder Cat; Beauregard The Barbarian; and Digger O'Dell The Undertaker's Dawg.

Jack Crumpler

Jack Crumpler, who attended services of tent revivalists in his hometown of Abilene, Texas, is retired following a career in news reporting, public relations, advertising and marketing. His short stories have appeared in several literary magazines. He and his wife, Jeane, live on Lake Conroe, north of Houston. SISTER CATHEDRA is his first novel.

Christopher Woods

Christopher Woods is a native Texan who writes fiction, non-fiction, poems and plays. His work has appeared in over three hundred publications in the U.S. and fourteen foreign countries. These include COLUMBIA, NEW ENGLAND REVIEW, THE SOUTHERN REVIEW and GLIMMER TRAIN.

His plays have been produced in Houston, Ft. Worth, Memphis, Minneapolis, Providence, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, and New York City. He is the author of THE DREAM PATCH, a brief novel about a Texas family in the 1940s. He is the recipient of a grant from the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation, and residencies from the Ucross Foundation and the Edward Albee Foundation.

He and his artist wife, Linda, live in Houston, where he has taught writing workshops at Rice University Continuing Studies Program and The Women's Institute.

chichi layor
Chichi layor's first collection, BREAK EVERY RULE, was published in 1989, and her poems have subsequently appeared in various magazines and journals in Nigeria and the United States. In addition to writing poetry, she has written a weekly column for a national newspaper in Nigeria. She currently lives in London where she works in the field of human rights.

Frances McMaster
Frances McMaster has had poetry published and articles related to her profession, and is a regular contributor to the Brackettville News where she lives. However, this is her first published book. McMaster's profession as a psychotherapist deals with the essence of her subjects rather than the facade they present to the world. As a writer and an artist, this same interest emerges in characters she portrays in a book, or individuals she paints on canvas. She says, "I love mysteries. Just as people are a mystery, we never completely understand life itself. The fun is in seeking the answer; the value lies in the differences." McMaster is a widow living with companion, Heidi, a silver gray Schnauzer. She has 2 adult offspring and 3 grandchildren, all artistic and creative.

Barbara Taylor Sissel
Barbara Taylor Sissel is a full-time writer and editor who lives in The Woodlands, Texas. The Last Innocent Hour is her debut novel. She is currently at work on another story of suspense.

Eli Mayhew
Pictured are Eli Mayhew and Chester in a rare moment of simultaneous good behavior. Eli, the one in the hat, has published stories in Suddenly and Suddenly II. This is his first novel. Chester has provided ample antics for sequels. However, in an uncharacteristic display of discipline, Eli is currently working on a historical novel. Eli lives in Montgomery County, Texas, with his lovely wife, Jean.

L.D. Clark
Born and brought up in North Texas, L. D. Clark spent over four years in the U. S. Air Force, two of them in combat service. He came home to study literature at Columbia University, from which he holds the B.A, the M.A and the Ph.D degrees. He then entered a long career as a university professor, scholar, critic and textual editor. He received a William Bayard Cutting Fellowship from Columbia University, a Ford Foundation Publication Grant through the University of Texas Press and a Fulbright Travel Grant. He traveled and lectured for the U. S. Information Service. He was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Nice, Kansai University in Japan and Korea University. He enjoys an international reputation as a D. H. Lawrence critic and editor. All the while he has also been writing fiction, publishing five novels and two books of short stories. Lone Journey and Other Questing Stories is his eleventh book.

Sandra Gail Teichmann
Other books by Sandra Gail Teichmann are Slow Mud and Woman of the Plains. She has an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College and a Ph.D. in English from Florida State University. She is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Modern Languages at West Texas A&M University.

photo: Deanne Hollowick
Dodie Messer Meeks
Journalist Dodie Messer Meeks is the author of The Field, a Hetty Bach mystery, When I Got Dressed Again, a collection of her poetry and drawings, and, as Marcus Dickey, Seventy-Five Year History of the University of Texas Medical Branch. She has just completed her next Hetty Bach mystery, The Lying Dying Man.

Robb Jackson
Robb Jackson was born and raised in Ohio, where he spent much of his time growing up exploring the water, beaches, coves and swamps along Lake Erie. Fifteen years ago he exchanged his sweet water origins for a saltwater life on the coastal bend of the Gulf of Mexico in South Texas where he writes and teaches at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Living on the Hurricane Coast is his first collection of poems.

Paul Christensen
Paul Christensen is the author of sixteen books of prose and poetry, and the winner of numerous literary awards. He was a National Endowment of the Arts poetry fellow in 1990, and the first recipient of Antioch Review�s "Distinguished Prose" award for his essay, "In Praise of Bluffing." He won a "Best Short Fiction" from the Texas Institute of Letters for his story, "Water," and has received several writing grants from the Writers� League, and a Blue Violet award for best work of literature for his book of prose poems, Blue Alleys (Stone River Press, 2001). He has written studies of the poets Charles Olson and Clayton Eshleman, and a memoir of his life and times in Texas, West of the American Dream: An Encounter with Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2001), a finalist for the Violet Crown non-fiction award of that year. He teaches modern literature and writing at Texas A&M University, and writes for various journals about contemporary French culture. He lives part of the year in Provence with his wife and three children.

Eric Muirhead
The poetry and fiction of Eric Muirhead reflect a life of varied occupations and settings following his degree from Yale: a cab driver working nights in Houston in the early 70's, a hardhat a few years later working for Houston's Brown & Root on the island of Labuan, East Malaysia, in the construction of offshore drilling and production platforms, a sailor crossing the Pacific in a schooner he built during his tenure in the East, and a high school teacher in Los Angeles for the years that followed. He began publishing poetry in the 70's, and took up writing fiction in L.A. He returned to Houston in '91, joining the English faculty at San Jacinto College, and since has published numerous short stories in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. Cab Tales is his first book.

photo: Christie Craig
Wanda Dionne
Award-winning author and native Texan Wanda Dionne holds a BA in journalism from Baylor University. She has written professionally for newspapers and magazines. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in national publications such as Writers' Digest. She is the author of three young adult historical novels: The Couturiere of Galvez, Reyna's Reward, A Yank Among Us; and one children's picture book, Little Thumb. Washed in the Blood is her debut adult suspense novel.

Terry Dalrymple
Terry Dalrymple has published numerous short stories, articles, and reviews in periodicals such as Modern Short Stories, Cimarron Review, American Literary Review, Short Story, The Writer, and Writer�s Digest. His stories have appeared in the anthologies New Growth 2 and Texas Short Stories. He is also the author of Fishing for Trouble, a novel for middle readers. In 1987, with funding from Fort Concho Museum Press, he founded the literary journal Concho River Review, for which he currently serves as fiction editor. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and holds the John S. Cargile Professorship in English at Angelo State University, where he has taught for twenty-four years. He and Lorraine, his wife of twenty-seven years, have three children, Joshua, Phillip, and Sarah.

Ida Harbison Luttrell
Ida Luttrell grew up on a small ranch in South Texas. She received a BA degree from the University of Texas and is the author of several children's books, including Milo�s Toothache, Tillie and Mert, and Three Good Blankets, as well as essays and nonfiction material for adults. Her children's books have been selected by book clubs, translated into several languages, named to ABA's Pick of the List, Bank Street College's Children's Books of the Year, Library of Congress Best Books of 1993, and adapted for the stage by a national children's theater company.

Peggie Herron Miller
Peggie Herron Miller, a Kentucky Colonel, is a product of many generations in the Western Kentucky area about which she writes. Her first published work appeared before her tenth birthday. On academic scholarships, she attended Vanderbilt University and David Lipscomb University, where she earned a degree magna cum laude in Education. While in school, she wrote for the Nashville Tennessean and edited the college newspaper and magazine. Since 1991 she has written twice weekly fine arts and entertainment columns for a daily newspaper in Montgomery County, Texas. Over the years, her work has also appeared in national magazines. Her active participation in community affairs has led to her appointment on several boards of directors in the arts. She and her husband, Cliff Miller, a retired corporate attorney, live on a lake in Texas and make regular forays to their Kentucky farm.

Warren Carrier
Warren Carrier has published seventeen books, including seven novels, six collections of poetry, a book of translations, and three edited books. He has also published more than two hundred poems, articles, stories, translations, and reviews in literary periodicals over a period of years. He was the founder and original editor of the Quarterly Review of Literature. He is a university chancellor emeritus (Wisconsin). He retired some twenty years ago to Galveston, Texas, where he has continued his literary career.

Irma Ned Bailey
Irma Ned Bailey grew up in Burkburnett, Texas, the small town upon which her novel Fire In The Bones is based. She is a Professor of English of San Antonio College. Her short stories and essays about literature appear in national and international journals. This is her first book-length publication.

Tanure Ojaide
A Fellow in Writing of the University of Iowa, Tanure Ojaide was educated at the University of Ibadan, where he received a bachelor�s degree in English, and at Syracuse University, where he received both M.A. in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English. He has published over a dozen collections of poetry, a book of short stories, a memoir, and scholarly work. His literary awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the African Region (1987), the All-Africa-Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988, 1997), the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988), and the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Award (1988, 1994, and 2003). Ojaide taught for many years at The University of Maiduguri (Nigeria), and is currently Professor of African-American and African Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1999 and a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award that took him to Nigeria in 2002/2003. Sovereign Body is his first published novel.

JoAnn Harper
JoAnn Harper was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and reared in Florida where she lived until 1980 when she moved to Houston. Although her formal education is in the visual arts, she kept a journal and wrote prose poetry and short stories for most of her adult life. This memoir is her first published work. She lives in The Woodlands, Texas, with her two cats, Koko and PittiSing.

Jan Epton Seale
Jan Epton Seale, born in north Texas, writes and teaches writing in the subtropical Rio Grande Valley, where she has lived most of her adult life. Schooled at Baylor, the University of Louisville, and the University of North Texas, Seale held a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts in l982. Seven short stories won distribution in the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project, including several broadcast on National Public Radio. Her books include Airlift (short stories); Homeland (nonfiction); and four volumes of poetry, the latest The Yin of It.

Roy L. Fish
Oral historian and raconteur Roy Fish says, "Having lived life in reverse, I suspect that I was born feet-first. This champion reader and speller was severed from academia by algebra and English literature; the former was incomprensible and an essay on a section of Treasure Island impossible. I didn't even pick up a pencil!

"I clerked in a Ben Franklin at 14, drilled oil wells in my early 20s, and became a bricklayer, from which I am retired. Taught myself algebra, graduated high school at 36, enrolled in college at 44. Received an A for a handwritten English literature term paper and made Phi Theta Kappa. I was delighted for my young female history professor to call upon me to fill the gaps in her book learning and experience.

"I have published short stories and a suspense novel, Iceman. San Antonio is home to wife Wanda and me."

Roger Paulding
Beginning with sales of short stories while he was a teenager, Roger Paulding garnered a number of awards for his writing. After graduation from Hardin-Simmons University, he served a summer as manager of the Publicity Department. He also attended Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, for three years.The last ten years of his career he did technical writing. Since retiring, he has worked on five novels. He is most proud of The Pickled Dog Caper, set in Colonial America.

photo: John Wegner
Chris Ellery
Chris Ellery is Professor of English at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. He received his PhD from Texas A&M University, MA from University of Arkansas, and BFA from Arkansas Tech University. His co-translation of Walid Ikhlassi's Whatever Happened to Antara, a collection of Syrian short stories, was published in 2004 by the Center for Middle East Studies, University of Texas Press. All This Light We Live In is his first book of poems, many of which have been published in various literary journals.

Judy Alter
Judy Alter considers herself a woman of the American West by adoption. Born in Illinois, she has lived in Texas for over thirty years and traveled widely in the West. She is the author of nearly sixty books, fiction and nonfiction for both adults and young readers, many dealing with women of the West. Luke and the Van Zandt County War was named the Best Juvenile Novel of 1984 by the Texas Institute of Letters. Mattie won a Spur Award as the Best Western Novel from Western Writers of America. Sundance, Butch and Me is her most recent adult novel, and Sam Houston Is My Hero is her most recent young-adult novel. In June 2005 she will receive the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement from Western Writers of America, Inc.

Judy holds a Ph.D. in English from TCU, with a special interest in the literature of the American West. She joined the TCU Press as editor in 1982 and was named director in 1987. The mother of four grown children and the grandmother of four, she shares her Fort Worth, Texas, home with a wild Australian shepherd named Scooby and a placid, fuzzy cat named Wynona.

Chuck Taylor
Chuck Taylor is Coordinator of Creative Writing at Texas AM& University in College Station, where he has taught since 1989. He is the father of three children and three step-children, and grandfather of two grandchildren and five step-grandchildren. Since 1973 he has operated Slough Press, which has published over thirty titles and won numerous grants and awards. In the 1980s he co-operated Paperbacks Plus Bookstore in Austin, which became an important literary and artistic center. His last book of poetry was Flying: A Primer. His latest book of prose is All Things Flow Away.

Donn Taylor	A career Army officer, Donn Taylor led an Infantry rifle platoon in Korea, served with Army aviation in Vietnam, and worked with air reconnaissance and intelligence collection in Europe and Asia. Afterwards, he taught English literature at two liberal arts colleges. He and his wife now live near Houston, where he writes fiction, poetry, and articles on current topics.
Omar S. Pound	OMAR SHAKESPEAR POUND is an Anglo-American, educated at Charterhouse, England, where one of his ancestors, William Makepeace Thackeray, went, who also detested the place. He served in the U.S. Army (in France and Germany), received an A.B. from Hamilton College, did graduate work at the Institute of Islamic Studies (McGill University), and also attended the London School of Oriental and African Studies and the University of Tehran as a guest-student of the Iranian Government-his main studies throughout being Persian, Arabic, Islamic history, and Anthropology. He taught at the Roxbury Latin School in Boston for five years, after which he went to North Africa to run a school. Thereafter, he taught at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology in Cambridge, England, before moving with his wife Elizabeth to the United States to teach at Princeton University, from which he recently retired. He is currently editing letters written during the Sepoy War, or the Indian Mutiny (1857).
Cynthia Leal Massey	Cynthia Leal Massey is on the English adjunct faculty at San Antonio College. Prior positions include work as an editor and writer at Southwest Research Institute, an industrial research and development corporation; and as a correspondent for a major San Antonio newspaper. Her fiction has appeared in the national magazine, Cricket, and in New Texas 2000, an anthology of works by Texas authors. She is also the author of the award-winning Fire Lilies, a novel of the Mexican Revolution. She says, "I write for the descendants of the half-million immigrants who sought a new home here because of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 as much as for myself-a third-generation American of Mexican descent." The Caballeros of Ruby, Texas is a continuation of the drama that unfolds in Fire Lilies. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Cynthia now lives in a small town northwest of the city with her husband and two children.
Jeana Kendrick	Jeana Kendrick is managing editor for the DOOR OF HOPE MAGAZINE as well as communications director overseeing the quality and on-time production of Door of Hope International's USA and Canadian publishing concerns. Her work has appeared in various newspapers and books, recently in Fall From Innocence, Page One Publications, Suddenly, and Suddenly II, Martin House Publications. She is at work on her second contemporary novel of international intrigue.
Wm. Anthony Connolly	Wm. Anthony Connolly was educated at the University of Winnipeg, Red River College and holds a Masters of Creative Writing degree from Goddard College, Vermont. He teaches English and writing at North Harris College. He is a published poet, essayist, short story writer and playwright and has received writing awards in the United States and Canada. He works as a journalist for the on-line international news site, CountryWatch.com, based in Houston. Panther Creek Press is publishing his debut novel, "The Jenny Muck." He has a short story collection "The Naked Sea," a collection of essays "Conversations With My Cat," and a poetry collection, "jesusjazzjunk." He is now writing his fifth novel, "Thawing Grace." NeWest Press in Alberta, Canada is considering his novella, "Get Back" for publication. He lives in Texas with his wife, Dyan; Jigsaw The Wonder Cat; Beauregard The Barbarian; and Digger O'Dell The Undertaker's Dawg.
Jack Crumpler	Jack Crumpler, who attended services of tent revivalists in his hometown of Abilene, Texas, is retired following a career in news reporting, public relations, advertising and marketing. His short stories have appeared in several literary magazines. He and his wife, Jeane, live on Lake Conroe, north of Houston. SISTER CATHEDRA is his first novel.
Christopher Woods	Christopher Woods is a native Texan who writes fiction, non-fiction, poems and plays. His work has appeared in over three hundred publications in the U.S. and fourteen foreign countries. These include COLUMBIA, NEW ENGLAND REVIEW, THE SOUTHERN REVIEW and GLIMMER TRAIN. His plays have been produced in Houston, Ft. Worth, Memphis, Minneapolis, Providence, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, and New York City. He is the author of THE DREAM PATCH, a brief novel about a Texas family in the 1940s. He is the recipient of a grant from the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation, and residencies from the Ucross Foundation and the Edward Albee Foundation. He and his artist wife, Linda, live in Houston, where he has taught writing workshops at Rice University Continuing Studies Program and The Women's Institute.
chichi layor	Chichi layor's first collection, BREAK EVERY RULE, was published in 1989, and her poems have subsequently appeared in various magazines and journals in Nigeria and the United States. In addition to writing poetry, she has written a weekly column for a national newspaper in Nigeria. She currently lives in London where she works in the field of human rights.
Frances McMaster	Frances McMaster has had poetry published and articles related to her profession, and is a regular contributor to the Brackettville News where she lives. However, this is her first published book. McMaster's profession as a psychotherapist deals with the essence of her subjects rather than the facade they present to the world. As a writer and an artist, this same interest emerges in characters she portrays in a book, or individuals she paints on canvas. She says, "I love mysteries. Just as people are a mystery, we never completely understand life itself. The fun is in seeking the answer; the value lies in the differences." McMaster is a widow living with companion, Heidi, a silver gray Schnauzer. She has 2 adult offspring and 3 grandchildren, all artistic and creative.
Barbara Taylor Sissel	Barbara Taylor Sissel is a full-time writer and editor who lives in The Woodlands, Texas. The Last Innocent Hour is her debut novel. She is currently at work on another story of suspense.
Eli Mayhew	Pictured are Eli Mayhew and Chester in a rare moment of simultaneous good behavior. Eli, the one in the hat, has published stories in Suddenly and Suddenly II. This is his first novel. Chester has provided ample antics for sequels. However, in an uncharacteristic display of discipline, Eli is currently working on a historical novel. Eli lives in Montgomery County, Texas, with his lovely wife, Jean.
L.D. Clark	Born and brought up in North Texas, L. D. Clark spent over four years in the U. S. Air Force, two of them in combat service. He came home to study literature at Columbia University, from which he holds the B.A, the M.A and the Ph.D degrees. He then entered a long career as a university professor, scholar, critic and textual editor. He received a William Bayard Cutting Fellowship from Columbia University, a Ford Foundation Publication Grant through the University of Texas Press and a Fulbright Travel Grant. He traveled and lectured for the U. S. Information Service. He was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Nice, Kansai University in Japan and Korea University. He enjoys an international reputation as a D. H. Lawrence critic and editor. All the while he has also been writing fiction, publishing five novels and two books of short stories. Lone Journey and Other Questing Stories is his eleventh book.
Sandra Gail Teichmann	Other books by Sandra Gail Teichmann are Slow Mud and Woman of the Plains. She has an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College and a Ph.D. in English from Florida State University. She is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Modern Languages at West Texas A&M University.
photo: Deanne Hollowick Dodie Messer Meeks	Journalist Dodie Messer Meeks is the author of The Field, a Hetty Bach mystery, When I Got Dressed Again, a collection of her poetry and drawings, and, as Marcus Dickey, Seventy-Five Year History of the University of Texas Medical Branch. She has just completed her next Hetty Bach mystery, The Lying Dying Man.
Robb Jackson	Robb Jackson was born and raised in Ohio, where he spent much of his time growing up exploring the water, beaches, coves and swamps along Lake Erie. Fifteen years ago he exchanged his sweet water origins for a saltwater life on the coastal bend of the Gulf of Mexico in South Texas where he writes and teaches at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Living on the Hurricane Coast is his first collection of poems.
Paul Christensen	Paul Christensen is the author of sixteen books of prose and poetry, and the winner of numerous literary awards. He was a National Endowment of the Arts poetry fellow in 1990, and the first recipient of Antioch Review�s "Distinguished Prose" award for his essay, "In Praise of Bluffing." He won a "Best Short Fiction" from the Texas Institute of Letters for his story, "Water," and has received several writing grants from the Writers� League, and a Blue Violet award for best work of literature for his book of prose poems, Blue Alleys (Stone River Press, 2001). He has written studies of the poets Charles Olson and Clayton Eshleman, and a memoir of his life and times in Texas, West of the American Dream: An Encounter with Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2001), a finalist for the Violet Crown non-fiction award of that year. He teaches modern literature and writing at Texas A&M University, and writes for various journals about contemporary French culture. He lives part of the year in Provence with his wife and three children.
Eric Muirhead	The poetry and fiction of Eric Muirhead reflect a life of varied occupations and settings following his degree from Yale: a cab driver working nights in Houston in the early 70's, a hardhat a few years later working for Houston's Brown & Root on the island of Labuan, East Malaysia, in the construction of offshore drilling and production platforms, a sailor crossing the Pacific in a schooner he built during his tenure in the East, and a high school teacher in Los Angeles for the years that followed. He began publishing poetry in the 70's, and took up writing fiction in L.A. He returned to Houston in '91, joining the English faculty at San Jacinto College, and since has published numerous short stories in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. Cab Tales is his first book.
photo: Christie Craig Wanda Dionne	Award-winning author and native Texan Wanda Dionne holds a BA in journalism from Baylor University. She has written professionally for newspapers and magazines. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in national publications such as Writers' Digest. She is the author of three young adult historical novels: The Couturiere of Galvez, Reyna's Reward, A Yank Among Us; and one children's picture book, Little Thumb. Washed in the Blood is her debut adult suspense novel.
Terry Dalrymple	Terry Dalrymple has published numerous short stories, articles, and reviews in periodicals such as Modern Short Stories, Cimarron Review, American Literary Review, Short Story, The Writer, and Writer�s Digest. His stories have appeared in the anthologies New Growth 2 and Texas Short Stories. He is also the author of Fishing for Trouble, a novel for middle readers. In 1987, with funding from Fort Concho Museum Press, he founded the literary journal Concho River Review, for which he currently serves as fiction editor. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and holds the John S. Cargile Professorship in English at Angelo State University, where he has taught for twenty-four years. He and Lorraine, his wife of twenty-seven years, have three children, Joshua, Phillip, and Sarah.
Ida Harbison Luttrell	Ida Luttrell grew up on a small ranch in South Texas. She received a BA degree from the University of Texas and is the author of several children's books, including Milo�s Toothache, Tillie and Mert, and Three Good Blankets, as well as essays and nonfiction material for adults. Her children's books have been selected by book clubs, translated into several languages, named to ABA's Pick of the List, Bank Street College's Children's Books of the Year, Library of Congress Best Books of 1993, and adapted for the stage by a national children's theater company.
Peggie Herron Miller	Peggie Herron Miller, a Kentucky Colonel, is a product of many generations in the Western Kentucky area about which she writes. Her first published work appeared before her tenth birthday. On academic scholarships, she attended Vanderbilt University and David Lipscomb University, where she earned a degree magna cum laude in Education. While in school, she wrote for the Nashville Tennessean and edited the college newspaper and magazine. Since 1991 she has written twice weekly fine arts and entertainment columns for a daily newspaper in Montgomery County, Texas. Over the years, her work has also appeared in national magazines. Her active participation in community affairs has led to her appointment on several boards of directors in the arts. She and her husband, Cliff Miller, a retired corporate attorney, live on a lake in Texas and make regular forays to their Kentucky farm.
Warren Carrier	Warren Carrier has published seventeen books, including seven novels, six collections of poetry, a book of translations, and three edited books. He has also published more than two hundred poems, articles, stories, translations, and reviews in literary periodicals over a period of years. He was the founder and original editor of the Quarterly Review of Literature. He is a university chancellor emeritus (Wisconsin). He retired some twenty years ago to Galveston, Texas, where he has continued his literary career.
Irma Ned Bailey	Irma Ned Bailey grew up in Burkburnett, Texas, the small town upon which her novel Fire In The Bones is based. She is a Professor of English of San Antonio College. Her short stories and essays about literature appear in national and international journals. This is her first book-length publication.
Tanure Ojaide	A Fellow in Writing of the University of Iowa, Tanure Ojaide was educated at the University of Ibadan, where he received a bachelor�s degree in English, and at Syracuse University, where he received both M.A. in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English. He has published over a dozen collections of poetry, a book of short stories, a memoir, and scholarly work. His literary awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the African Region (1987), the All-Africa-Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988, 1997), the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988), and the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Award (1988, 1994, and 2003). Ojaide taught for many years at The University of Maiduguri (Nigeria), and is currently Professor of African-American and African Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1999 and a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award that took him to Nigeria in 2002/2003. Sovereign Body is his first published novel.
JoAnn Harper	JoAnn Harper was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and reared in Florida where she lived until 1980 when she moved to Houston. Although her formal education is in the visual arts, she kept a journal and wrote prose poetry and short stories for most of her adult life. This memoir is her first published work. She lives in The Woodlands, Texas, with her two cats, Koko and PittiSing.
Jan Epton Seale	Jan Epton Seale, born in north Texas, writes and teaches writing in the subtropical Rio Grande Valley, where she has lived most of her adult life. Schooled at Baylor, the University of Louisville, and the University of North Texas, Seale held a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts in l982. Seven short stories won distribution in the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project, including several broadcast on National Public Radio. Her books include Airlift (short stories); Homeland (nonfiction); and four volumes of poetry, the latest The Yin of It.
Roy L. Fish	Oral historian and raconteur Roy Fish says, "Having lived life in reverse, I suspect that I was born feet-first. This champion reader and speller was severed from academia by algebra and English literature; the former was incomprensible and an essay on a section of Treasure Island impossible. I didn't even pick up a pencil! "I clerked in a Ben Franklin at 14, drilled oil wells in my early 20s, and became a bricklayer, from which I am retired. Taught myself algebra, graduated high school at 36, enrolled in college at 44. Received an A for a handwritten English literature term paper and made Phi Theta Kappa. I was delighted for my young female history professor to call upon me to fill the gaps in her book learning and experience. "I have published short stories and a suspense novel, Iceman. San Antonio is home to wife Wanda and me."
Roger Paulding	Beginning with sales of short stories while he was a teenager, Roger Paulding garnered a number of awards for his writing. After graduation from Hardin-Simmons University, he served a summer as manager of the Publicity Department. He also attended Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, for three years.The last ten years of his career he did technical writing. Since retiring, he has worked on five novels. He is most proud of The Pickled Dog Caper, set in Colonial America.
photo: John Wegner Chris Ellery	Chris Ellery is Professor of English at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. He received his PhD from Texas A&M University, MA from University of Arkansas, and BFA from Arkansas Tech University. His co-translation of Walid Ikhlassi's Whatever Happened to Antara, a collection of Syrian short stories, was published in 2004 by the Center for Middle East Studies, University of Texas Press. All This Light We Live In is his first book of poems, many of which have been published in various literary journals.
Judy Alter	Judy Alter considers herself a woman of the American West by adoption. Born in Illinois, she has lived in Texas for over thirty years and traveled widely in the West. She is the author of nearly sixty books, fiction and nonfiction for both adults and young readers, many dealing with women of the West. Luke and the Van Zandt County War was named the Best Juvenile Novel of 1984 by the Texas Institute of Letters. Mattie won a Spur Award as the Best Western Novel from Western Writers of America. Sundance, Butch and Me is her most recent adult novel, and Sam Houston Is My Hero is her most recent young-adult novel. In June 2005 she will receive the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement from Western Writers of America, Inc. Judy holds a Ph.D. in English from TCU, with a special interest in the literature of the American West. She joined the TCU Press as editor in 1982 and was named director in 1987. The mother of four grown children and the grandmother of four, she shares her Fort Worth, Texas, home with a wild Australian shepherd named Scooby and a placid, fuzzy cat named Wynona.
Chuck Taylor	Chuck Taylor is Coordinator of Creative Writing at Texas AM& University in College Station, where he has taught since 1989. He is the father of three children and three step-children, and grandfather of two grandchildren and five step-grandchildren. Since 1973 he has operated Slough Press, which has published over thirty titles and won numerous grants and awards. In the 1980s he co-operated Paperbacks Plus Bookstore in Austin, which became an important literary and artistic center. His last book of poetry was Flying: A Primer. His latest book of prose is All Things Flow Away.