Jeffery Beam's ("Submergences" & Crossing Water, by Florence Nash) Submergences was published in June by Off the Cuff Books. Having been a regular contributor to OBR, he is now poetry editor, and will be editing the January poetry issue of Oyster Boy Review. Mr. Beam is author of five books of poetry, including Visions of Dame Kind from The Jargon Society and The Fountain from NC Wesleyan College Press. Mr. Beam's papers and letters have been added recently to the North Carolina Writers Collection of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Stephen G. Bloom ("The Little Man") spent most of the summers during his youth in the stockroom of his father's shoe store, Townley Shoes. Against his father's advice, he became a journalist, worked as a reporter for six newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News, and now is associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa. The Little Man is the basis of a full-length play he and Brian Cronk co-authored, entitled Shoedog. A non-fiction book by Mr. Bloom about a colony of Lubavitcher Jews who settled in a tiny northeastern Iowa town will be published next year by the University of Illinois Press.

Joe Bolton's ("The Summer Loves") work has appeared in The Antioch Review, The North American Review, Poetry, The Yale Review, and Yellow Silk, among others. Mr. Bolton was born in 1961 in Cadiz, Kentucky, and died by suicide in March 1990. The bibliography in this issue is the first attempt to collect Mr. Bolton's publications. Tonya Parsons maintains a Joe Bolton website featuring two unpublished Bolton poems.

Reuben Cox ("Western North Carolina, Summer 1996") is a photographer who shares his time between New York City and Highlands, North Carolina. His work has been published in DoubleTake 5 and in 25 and Under: Photographers from DoubleTake Books.

Thomas Rain Crowe (Mountains and Rivers Without End, by Gary Snyder) is the publisher of New Native Press. Firsts, a chapter from his unpublished novel A House of Girls, appeared in OBR6.

J. Drummey's ("Eva, with no questions") work has appeared in The New York Quarterly, The Hiram Poetry Review, and The William and Mary Review. She has studied under Cornelius Eady and Toby Olson. Ms. Drummey used to have two pitcher plants, but the cat ate one.

John Gardiner ("Toward the End") is a short story writer from southwestern Ontario, Canada. He calls his short stories "emotional thoughtscapes" because of the strong emotional responses they illicit from the reader. He has self-published four chapbooks of his work and been published in several literary arts magazines in Canada and the U.S.

Laila Halaby ("Death of a Poet" & "Kentucky Words" & "An Influence on my Writing Life"), the daughter of a Jordanian father and an American mother, was born in Lebanon and grew up in the U.S. Two of her poems appeared in the anthology Food for Our Grandmothers, and two stories from her collection Flowers from my Roza will appear in an upcoming issue of Hammer. Her poems have also appeared in Emergences, The Rattlesnake Review, Mr. Cogito, and The Tuscon Weekly.

Lucy Harrison ("Things To Do Today") works at Indian River Community College in Ft. Pierce, Florida. She studied fiction writing under Harry Crews at the University of Florida, and has twice been named as one of the "World's Best Online Fiction" writers by eSCENE (for Just Another Night and Day in OBR5, and Sanctuary's for the Birds in OBR3"). Her favorite color is blue; her turn-ons include chocolate ice-cream, walking on the beach in the rain, and sensitive, caring guys named Rod. This is her sixth piece of fiction to appear in Oyster Boy Review.

Steve Kistulentz (The Right Man for the Job, by Mike Magnuson) lives and writes in the Washington, D.C., area. His work has appeared in The Antioch, Chiron, and Crescent Reviews, Exquisite Corpse, and OBR6. Other work is forthcoming in various literary magazines.

Lyn Lifshin ("Though Sick of all the Men ..." & "When She's a Grandmother ...") is one of the most widely published poets in the U.S. and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing about women. The poems in this issue, as well as the two poems which appeared in OBR6, were written for, but did not appear in, the anthology Dick for a Day. Forthcoming from Ms. Lifshin are My Mother's Fire from The Glass Cherry Press, Jesus Christ Live (and in the Flesh) from FT Books!, and Cold Comfort: Selected Poems 1970-1996 from Black Sparrow Press.

Kevin McGowin ("A Moving On") lives and writes in Micanopy, Florida, where he is at work on a collection of stories, some of which have appeared here and, recently, in Eclectica, and currently is preparing an interview with James Purdy for publication in OBR next year. He teaches English part-time at the University of Florida and has founded a punk band, Dead Me-Maw, for which he is the songwriter.

C. C. Russell's ("Happy Meal" & "While Julie Wrote 'Sex and Hump' on her Blondie Record") work has appeared in numerous little magazines, including OBR3 and OBR5.

Damon Sauve (Bolton Bibliography) maintains online bibliographies for Charles Bukowski and Harry Crews.

Phillip G. Schloss ("The Joe Bolton I Knew") writes, "I live in Durham and attended the MFA Program at the same time Joe did. This was at the University of Arizona. Incidentally, Joe was a star. He'd already published two books of poetry while the rest of us were, like, dreaming of it. Some of us still are . . ."

Transplanted from Texas, Nelson Taylor (Hints of His Mortality, by David Borofka) lives, works, and writes in New York City.