Patty Paine received an MFA degree in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is author of Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press, 2005) and her poems have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Southern Poetry Journal, The Journal, The Ledge, and many other journals. She has won an AWP Intro Journals Award, and an American Academy of Poets Joan and Catherine Byrne poetry award. She is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Doha, Qatar.

Jeff Lodge is the author of the novel Where This Lake Is (1997) and, with John A. Brown, A Prayer for Foxes and Hens (forthcoming). He has published fiction, poetry, and essays in GSU Review, Persona, Pleiades, Squib, and other publications, and has written dozens of book reviews for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Style Weekly. He is a founding and contributing editor of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, and is currently an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Doha, Qatar, where he teaches writing and literature.

We wish to thank the VCU School of the Arts in Qatar, which provides partial support for diode. Note, please, that diode does not reflect an official position of Virginia Commonwealth University or of VCUQ.