Patty Paine received an MFA degree in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the author of Oracle Bones, to be published by Red Hen Press in 2010, and of the chapbook Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press, 2005). 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. Currently, with Jeff Lodge and Samia Touati, she is editing Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry, to be published by Garnet Publishing/Ithaca Press in 2011. She is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar.

Jeff Lodge received an MFA degree in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BA in English from the University of Arizona. He is the author of the novel Where This Lake Is (1997), has published fiction, poetry, and essays in GSU Review, Makeout Creek, 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 an assistant professor in the University College of Virginia Commonwealth University, where he teaches writing and literature. Currently, with Patty Paine and Samia Touati, he is editing Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry, to be published by Garnet Publishing/Ithaca Press in 2011.

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