Robert Froese lives on Flat Bay in the solar-powered home he and his wife, Leonore Hildebrandt, built themselves. He teaches creative writing and film at the University of Maine at Machias and spends some of his spare time tending apple trees. Robert has published four novels: The Hour of Blue, The Forgotten Condition of Things, A Dark Music, and The Origins of Misgiving. He has also written short stories and screenplays and is currently working on another novel.

I live on a small saltwater bay in Maine. Along the coast there's a lot of weather and a lot of work, but everything seems to be made of space and is essentially spacious. The energy is full and always moving into different shapes, but it's still all space - this includes me. How to paint this free, obedient, beautiful and wild apparition which seems to be reality? I don't know!

Leonore grew up in Germany and teaches writing at the University of Maine. She serves as an editor for the Beloit Poetry Journal and runs the Maine Writers Series at the University of Maine at Machias. Her poetry has been published in the Denver Quarterly, the Beloit Poetry Journal, the Poetry Salzburg Review, and the Quercus Review, among others. Translations from the German appeared in Cerise Press. Her letterpress chapbook, The Work at Hand, is available through Flat Bay Press. A first book of poems, The Next Unknown, is forthcoming with Pecan Grove Press. Living “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine, Leonore enjoys working in her large vegetable garden.

Donna Kausen has made her home in Washington County Maine since 1976. She took up wood turning in 1999. Making bowls, both carving and turning, satisfies the human urge to create something functional and beautiful. Most of her wood is found locally and finished with nut oil.

Richard Miles' poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar and American Poetry Review. He works as a stonemason and lives with his family in Harrington, Maine. His collection Boat of Two Shores is available in paperback from the University of Maine Machias Press.

Brian Stewart lives with his family in Harrington, Maine. He has been writing and performing songs about love, family life, politics and peace for more than 30 years. He has four cds, including one of original piano music.

Tony Brinkley lives in Bangor and teaches poetry at the University of Maine at Orono. He is also the Faculty Associate at the University's Franco-American Centre. A sequence of his poems, Stalin's Eyes, was published by Puckerbrush Press and a second sequence, Gomorrah, will be published by Flat Bay Press in the near future. In collaboration with Elena Glazov and Raina Kostova, he is translating the Zhivago Poems by Boris Pasternak and the Voronezh Notebooks by Osip Mandelshtam. His poetry and translations have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, The New Review of Literature, Shofar, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Puckerbrush Review. In collaboration with Keith Hanley, he is the co-editor of Romantic Revisions, a collection of essays on the poetics of English Romanticism from Cambridge University Press.

Bernie Vinzani is the Director of The Book Arts Studio and Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Art at the University of Maine at Machias. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally in such venues as The VI International Print Biennial, Cracow Poland, ARC Gallery, Chicago, Das Papier, Duren, Germany, Paperworks Caracas, Venezuela, and the Maine Invitational, Portland, Maine.
As a professional papermaker, he has made paper for and collaborated with such artists as William Wegman, Red Grooms, Claire Van Vliet, Robert Natkin, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ansel Adams. Vinzani's work and has been featured in such publications as Hand Papermaking Journal, The Book of Fine Pape, American Craft Magazine, and Art New England. He has taught workshops at the Penland School of Crafts, North Carolina, Haystack School, Maine, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Colorado, The Southwest Craft Center, Texas, and the International Paper Conference, Boston.