Semezdin Mehmedinovic was born in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1960 and is the author of four books. In 1993 he was cowriter and codirector, with Benjamin Filipovic, of Mizaldo, one of the first Bosnian films shot during the war. The film was presented at the Berlin Film Festival in 1994, and won the first prize at the Mediterranean Festival in Rome the following year. He, his wife, and their child left Bosnia and came to the U.S. as polical refugees in 1996.
jae steele is a registered holistic nutritionist and runs the vegan blog "Domestic Affair." She has authored various self-published cookzines including Vegan Freegan and Ripe. Formerly from Montreal, she now lives in Toronto. Her first book, Get It Ripe, was published in 2008 and is now in its second printing; her second cookbook, Ripe from Around Here, will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in spring 2010. Follow jae steele on TwitterAmmiel Alcalay is poet, translator, critic, and scholar who teaches at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of, among other books, After Jews and Arabs (1993); the cairo notebooks (1993); Memories of Our Future (1999); from the… warring factions (2002); and Scrapmetal (2007). A new book of essays, A Little History , is due out in 2010. He was one of the initiators of the Poetry Is News Coalition , and helped to organize the Olson Now project. He has recently launched Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative , a publishing venture whose mission is to retrieve and make available key texts falling widely under the rubric of the New American Poetry.