Kathleen Alcalá is the author of a short story collection, Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist (Calyx), and three novels set in 19th Century Mexico: Spirits of the Ordinary, The Flower in the Skull, and Treasures in Heaven. She has received the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Governor's Writers Award, the Western States Book Award for Fiction, and the Washington State Book Award. She is a co-founder of, and contributing editor to, The Raven Chronicles, a magazine of multicultural art, literature and the spoken word, and has been a writer in residence at Seattle University, Richard Hugo House, and most recently a visiting lecturer at the University of New Mexico. A long-standing member of Los Norteños, a group of Latino writers in Western Washington, Kathleen has published fiction and nonfiction in numerous magazines. She lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, with her husband and son.

Peter Bacho, a Tacoma, Washington, based author, was the Distinguished Northwest Writer in Residence at Seattle University (Winter 2005). He is the author of five books. His awards include an American Book Award for his novel, CEBU, The Murray Morgan Prize, and a Washington Governor's Writers Award for his collection of short stories, Dark Blue Suit. His newest novel, Entrys,will be published next year by the University of Hawaii Press.

Marvin Bell delivered the PNWA 2000 Conference keynote speech. His seventeen books of poems and essays include Rampant (2004) from Copper Canyon Press and Poetry for a Midsummer's Night (74th Street Productions). He recently retired from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop after forty years on its faculty. His poem, The Case for the Arts and Humanities, included here was written while serving as Iowa's first Poet Laureate. He and his wife Dorothy live half the year in Port Townsend, Washington.

Terry Brooks was born in Sterling, Illinois, in 1944. He received his undergraduate degree from Hamilton College, where he majored in English Literature, and his graduate degree from the School of Law at Washington & Lee University. A writer since the age of ten, he published his first novel, The Sword of Shannara, in 1977. It became the first work of fantasy ever to appear on the New York Times Trade Paperback Bestseller List, where it remained for over five months. He has written twenty-one novels, two movie adaptations, and a memoir on his writing life. He has sold over twenty million copies of his books and is published worldwide. He lives with his wife Judine in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii.

Stella Cameron is the New York Times/USA Today/ Washington Post/Booklist best selling, award-winning author of sixty historical and contemporary novels and novellas. She has won the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Romantic Suspense and the Romantic Times Best Romantic Suspense of the Year Award. She has been a RITA finalist, and is the recipient of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Achievement Award for distinguished professional achievement enhancing the stature of the Northwest literary community. Stella and her husband live in Seattle, Washington. They are the parents of three children.

Meg Chittenden has published over a hundred short stories and articles, and thirty-five books in various genres, in the thirty-four years this nationally-acclaimed author has been writing. These include three books for children, romance novels, paranormal fiction, and mystery novels. Many of her books have appeared on bestseller lists. Her recent publications include The Charlie Plato Mystery Series, and How to Write YOUR Novel, and most recently, More Than You Know, and Snap Shot, both suspense novels published by Berkley. Meg is a recipient of the Pacific Northwest Writers Achievement Award, an Anthony Award for best short story, and an Otter for More Than You Know, from the Left Coast Crime Convention.

Robert Ferrigno was born in Florida, growing up on the last paved street of a small town, spending his youth cutting secret passages through the palmetto thickets with a machete and occasionally burning down those palmettos for the simple pleasure of seeing the trucks arrive, sirens blaring. After graduating with a degree in philosophy and a Masters in Creative Writing, he moved into a high crime area of Seattle and started playing poker full time. Five years later he got restless and used his winnings to start a punk rock magazine, which led to a gig at a legit newspaper in Southern California. Over the next seven years he flew with the Blue Angels, drove Ferraris and went for desert survival training with gun nuts. Great job, but he wanted to write novels.

Elizabeth George is the author of thirteen crime novels, a book of short stories, and a book on fiction writing. She is the winner of the Anthony and the Agatha Awards for best first novel, France's Grand Prix de Littèrature Policière, and Germany's MIMI. Her novels are sold internationally in more than thirty languages, and eleven have been filmed for television by England's BBC, and are regularly shown on PBS's Mystery! She is a committed teacher, having acted as an instructor across the United States and in Canada. She divides her time between her London flat and her home in Huntington Beach California, has a condominium in Seattle, Washington, and is in the midst of building a home on Whidbey Island, Washington. She is married with no children, although she will confess to being owned by two very adorable miniature dachshunds call Titch and Lucy.

Phyllis A.M. Hollenbeck, MD, is a native of Boston, and received both her undergraduate and graduate medical degrees from Brown University. She chose Family Medicine as her specialty, seeing it as the one from which all excellent care flows; it also means taking care of people, in the words of Dickens, from the lying-in to the laying-out. Her career has encompassed solo practice, academic teaching, and administrative leadership. She knew she wanted to be a writer before deciding to be a physician, living through words all her life, (including in music and mothering), penning long and short fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

J. A. Jance is the author of thirty mysteries, one volume of poetry, and two children's books. Refused admittance to the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona, she, like many other successful writers, came to writing through a back door opened for her by the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. Born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona, she's a former teacher, school librarian, and insurance salesman who didn't start writing her first novel until age thirty-nine when she was a single mother with two little kids, no child support, and a full time job selling life insurance. She wrote her first three books between the hours of four a.m. and seven a.m. when she got her kids up and ready to go to school and then herself ready to go to work. She and her second husband divide their time between homes in Seattle and Tucson.

Kay Kenyon has written six science fiction novels published by Bantam Books, as well as numerous short stories appearing in anthologies. Her early influences were teachers at the University of Washington, Roger Sale and Charles Johnson. She counts Robert Ray and Don McQuinn as inspirations, as well as her agent, Donald Maass. Her novels include Tropic of Creation, The Braided World, and The Seeds of Time (which won a prize in the PNWA Literary Contest in 1993). Her novel Maximum Ice was a finalist for the Phillip K. Dick Award, and has been translated into French. She has recently completed her most challenging novel to date, Bright of the Sky, the first of a quartet of books. She lives in Wenatchee, Washington, with her husband Tom Overcast.

Bharti Kirchner is a prolific author who has published eight books. Four of these are critically acclaimed novels. Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries, Darjeeling, Sharmila's Book, and Shiva Dancing. Her books have been translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, Thai and other foreign languages. Winner of two Seattle Arts Commission literature grants and a GAP grant by Seattle's Artist Trust, Bharti also writes articles and essays for many national publications and anthologies, including book reviews for the Seattle Times. An award-winning cook, she is the author of four popular cookbooks, including The Bold Vegetarian.

Craig Lesley is the author of four novels and the editor of two short-story collections. He has received three awards from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Winterkill won both a PNBA award for Best Novel and the Golden Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for the Best Novel of 1984. Both The Sky Fisherman and Storm Riders were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Lesley has served as Hallie Ford Chair at Willamette University and Professor of Creative Writing at Whitman College. He is currently the Senior Writer-in-Residence at Portland State University. His work has earned him two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a NEA Fellowship and a Bread Loaf Fellowship. Burning Fence, a nonfiction work about the rural West, is forthcoming from St. Martins Press.

Mark Lindquist was born and raised in Seattle. He attended the University of Washington and University of Southern California. After graduating, he worked as a copy writer for a movie studio. His first novel, Sad Movies, was based on this brief experience. It became a bestseller for Atlantic Monthly Press and was published in six languages. Referred to by the press as one of the socalled literary Brat Pack, he wrote screenplays, book reviews and articles, in addition to publishing his second novel, Carnival Desires, chronicling his Hollywood experience. Shortly thereafter he enrolled in Seattle University School of Law. He became a prosecuting attorney and spent five years in the Special Assault Unit. In 2000 People Magazine named him as one of the 100 Most Eligible Bachelors in the country. That same year his third novel, Never Mind Nirvana, was published by Random House/Villard.

Don McQuinn determined to be a writer a year after retiring from the United States Marine Corps in 1970. It s possible he would have succeeded without the impetus provided by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (known as the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference at the time), but the essential fact is that the impetus was provided, starting in 1971. He was fortunate enough to be accepted as a student in Zola Helen Ross's writing classes. The combination of her efforts and the critiques of other students established the foundation he's worked to build on ever since. His novels range from an examination of the Vietnam war through science fiction, have achieved best-seller status, and won the PNWA Achievement Award and the Governor's Award.

Fred Melton, is a full-time dentist from Wenatchee, Washington, whose writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2002, Talking River Review, California Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, Northern Passages, as well as other publications. His novel Slough Creek won second place in the 2004 PNWA Mainstream Novel Contest and the poems included in this anthology placed third.

Jim Molnar is a writer, editor and photographer currently at work on both fiction and nonfiction manuscripts. His several decades of work in daily journalism ranged from investigative and political reporting to news-feature writing and editing, including fifteen years with The Seattle Times travel section as a writer, editor and columnist. His travel journalism and photography, which has appeared in more than fifty newspapers, several anthologies and exhibitions, has merited a score of national and international awards. He's done some theater, written poetry with teens in juvenile detention, and works with other writers and authors as editor and coach. Jim, his family, and a cat called Enzo live in Seattle.

Marjorie Reynolds is an award-winning author. William Morrow & Co. published her novels, The Starlite Drive-in and The Civil Wars of Jonah Moran, in hardcover, and Berkley released them in paperback. The American Library Association chose The Starlite Drive-in as one of the Ten Best Books of 1998 for Young Adults, and Barnes & Noble selected it for a Discover Great New Writers Award. Rights were sold to seven countries. Her novels have received praise in the New York Times, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, as well as in numerous other newspapers and publications. She teaches advanced fiction at the University of Washington Extension and conducts writing workshops in Washington, Oregon and California.

Ann Rule is regarded by many as the foremost true crime writer in America, and the author responsible for the genre as it exists today. She came to her career with a solid background in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. She has been a Seattle Policewoman, caseworker for the Washington State Department of Public Assistance, student intern at the Oregon State Training School for Girls. A full-time true crime writer since 1969, she has published twenty-four books, all New York Times bestsellers. To date, four of her books have been made into TV movies. She won the coveted Peabody Award for her miniseries, Small Sacrifices, and has two Anthony Awards from Bouchercon, the mystery fans organization. She has been nominated four times for Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, and was also awarded the Washington State Governor's Award. Born in Lowell, Michigan, she now lives near Seattle, Washington, on the shores of Puget Sound. She is the mother of five, and grandmother of three.

Daniel Sconce says one of his first jobs out of junior college in Los Angeles was as the assistant to a Hollywood cameraman. It was 1972 and a good time to be a young man in the movie business. He was glad for the camera job and stayed with it for several years. After years of painting and writing for his own pleasure he began showing and selling his paintings in the late 1980s. Although his poems far outnumbered his paintings, he had no ambitions as a poet. Then in March of 2004, at the behest of his friend Kay Kenyon, he entered these poems in PNWA's Literary Contest. The result was winning the first place award. With the award money he self-published a collection of sixty-seven poems titled, Becoming What It Will.

Anna Sheehan was diagnosed with high-functioning autism at age eleven, and has been writing diligently since she learned how to type at the age of fourteen. She has found that writing enables her to understand the world better, and in understanding others, she can better understand herself. She mostly writes young adult fiction, aimed especially at teenagers with complicated lifestyles. At twenty-five she is currently working a farm in central Oregon, and raising her first child. She is a member of Wordos critique group in Eugene, Oregon.

Indu Sundaresan is the author of two novels, The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses, based on the life of the most powerful Empress in the Mughal dynasty that built the Taj Mahal in India. Her work has been translated into ten languages and she won the 2003 Washington State Book Award for The Twentieth Wife. Indu is currently working on a third novel, set in India in the 1940s.

Stephen John Walker was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. At age twenty-one, he entered the Army to see the world. During the next thirty years his travels took him from the jungles of Central America and the highlands of South Vietnam to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most of his stories are based on his personal experiences, or of those whom he met along the way. He now lives and writes just outside of Salem in the hills of western Oregon.

Shawn Wong's second novel, American Knees, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1995 (Scribner paperback, 1996). His first novel, Homebase (Reed and Cannon, 1979; reprinted by Plume/NAL, 1990), won both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the 15th Annual Governor's Writers Day Award of Washington. He is also the co-editor and editor of six Asian American and American multicultural literary anthologies including the pioneering anthology Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers (Howard University Press, 1974; reprinted in four different editions, most recently by Meridian in 1997). He is currently Professor of English and Director of the University Honors Program at the University of Washington, where he previously served as Chair of the Department of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program. His poem, Calling the Roll, included here was written for the University of Washingt