Karen M. Balch, born and raised in the snowbelt region of Upstate New York, wandered into New Mexico to take advantage of the sun and begin a new adventure. She believes the history and landscapes in the Southwest are stories waiting to be told.

Karen likes to spend time traveling with her husband and finds inspiration in the places and people she encounters.

Her poetry chapbook, Mountains, Rivers and Heavens, was published in 2005, by Finishing Line Press. She has several poems, including "The Ice Traveler" and "Watcher on the Horizon;" a work of creative non-fiction; and photography all published in Miners’ Ink. She is currently working on a third novel.

Dr. Penelope Boston is Director of the Cave and Karst Studies Program and Associate Professor in the Earth & Environmental Sciences Dept. at New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, in Socorro, NM. Boston is also Associate Director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute in Carlsbad, NM. Her poetry takes its inspiration primarily from her experience of the natural world as an outgrowth of her research in geomicrobiology and astrobiology in extreme environments all over the world (caves, hot and cold deserts, high latitudes and altitudes). A passionate enthusiast for human exploration of space, these themes also frequently appear in Boston’s writing. She grew up traveling the world as the only child of a theatrical family, went on the modeling runway at 3 and the stage at 4. She is a lifelong dancer, now focusing primarily on flamenco. Since 1991, Boston has pursued bobbin lace as a pictorial fine art.

Mary Dezember is Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Humanities Department at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, New Mexico. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Indiana University, with an emphasis on poetry and with Ph.D. minors in Performance Studies and Art History. Much of her research focuses on poetry and its performative aspects. She believes poetry should be written to accentuate the musicality of language, and when it is read or recited, it should be a performance that highlights the compositional beauty of the poem.

Her poems have appeared in several publications, including divide: journal of literature, arts, and ideas; The Ledge; Weber Studies; Wind; and the 1997 Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, and have aired on radio programs in New Mexico and Indiana and on Area Arts Television in Bloomington, Indiana.

She performs her poetry nationally at arts festivals, bookstores, conferences, and in coffee house poetry programs. For three years, she directed a coffee house poetry series that featured internationally-renowned poets and writers and provided a reading forum for emerging poets and writers.

Julie Dyke Ford teaches technical communication at New Mexico Tech. While she wasn’t born or raised in Socorro (or the Southwest for that matter), she feels more at home there than any other place. Her poetry has been published in The Poetry Forum, Sanskrit, Colonnades, and Miners’ Ink.

Glenda Stewart-Langley might well be called a regionalist of no set region. Her work reflects the time that she has spent in South Dakota, South Texas, South America, and New Mexico. In addition, she is fascinated by the women of the Old Testament, and they have been known to appear in her work as well. Her passions in life include - but are not limited to - women’s rights; her husband, Chris; and Chilean wines.

Noah Shepard was born in Austin TX, raised in New Mexico. His sister and mother are both artists. He currently studies computer science at New Mexico Tech University, Socorro New Mexico.