Frank X Walker

Nick Montfort

Cecelia Condit

Saul Williams

Mark Amerika

Stuart Moulthrop

Deena Larsen

Frank X Walker (http://www.frankxwalker.com/) is the author of four poetry collections: When Winter Come: the Ascension of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2008); Black Box (Old Cove Press, 2005); Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), which won the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2004; and Affrilachia (Old Cove Press, 2000). A 2005 recipient of the Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry, Walker serves as Writer in Residence and lecturer of English at Northern Kentucky University and is the proud editor and publisher of PLUCK!, the new Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture.

Nick Montfort (http://nickm.com/) is an assistant professor of digital media in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The digital media writing projects Montfort has undertaken include the blog Grand Text Auto, where he and five others write about computer narrative, poetry, games, and art; ppg256, a 256-character poetry generator; Ream, a 500-page poem written on one day; Mystery House Taken Over, a collaborative "occupation" of a classic game; Implementation, a novel on stickers written with Scott Rettberg; The Ed Report, a serialized novel written with William Gillespie; and several works of interactive fiction: Book and Volume, Ad Verbum, and Winchester's Nightmare: A Novel Machine. His work has been presented in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Irvine, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Providence, and Washington D.C. and in Brazil, Canada, England, Mexico, Norway, Spain, and Taiwan.

Artist Cecelia Condit studied sculpture at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA; received a B.F.A. in sculpture at the Philadelphia College of Art, and an M.F.A. in photography from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA. She has received numerous awards for her work including fellowships from The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the American Film Institute, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mary L. Nohl Fund. Her videos have been widely shown internationally at institutions and festivals including the Biennale de Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; and the Milwaukee Art Museum, WI. She is currently Professor of Film and Video and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Condit's work will be on exhibit at the North Dakota Museum of Art during the Writers Conference; it can also be viewed on her blog http://www.ceceliacondit.com/.

Gifted and fiery, Saul Williams (http://www.saulwilliams.com/) is a former Grand Slam Champion who continually explores social consciousness with passionate emotion through his poetry. His artistry is raw and expressive, and always capable of provoking deep introspective thought in hopes of bringing about change. Williams brings his remarkable success to books, film, television, and music. He co-wrote and starred in Slam, a Sundance Film Festival and Camera d’Or Cannes Film Festival winner. He has also been on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and is a recurring character on UPN’s hit show, Girlfriends. With three albums to his credit, Williams’s music provides a sonic soundscape for his already rhythmic and expansive poetry. His debut album, Amethyst Rock Star, earned him great critical acclaim and his September '04 self-titled release has received just as many accolades. As the author of four unique collections of poems, including She and The Seventh Octave, his voice adds value and intensity to the weight of words. His newest book, The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop, gives readers a tour of the history of hip-hop.

Mark Amerika (http://www.markamerika.com/), who has been named a "Time Magazine 100 Innovator" as part of their continuing series of features on the most influential artists, scientists, entertainers and philosophers into the 21st century, has had four retrospectives of his digital art work. Amerika is the Publisher of Alt-X, which he founded in 1993 and the electronic book review. Publishers Weekly has called Alt-X "the literary publishing model of the future." He is also the author of three published novels, two edited anthologies, and two artist ebooks. His first novel, The Kafka Chronicles, is now in its third printing. His second novel, Sexual Blood, has been translated into Italian as Sangue Sessuale. Amerika is also the producer, director, and writer of an ongoing series of limited edition feature-length films that are part of his Foreign Film Series. The first film released in the series is Immobilité. Immobilité was featured in the Fall 2008 Intermedia Programme at the Tate Modern and is scheduled for solo exhibitions in New York and Athens, Greece, in 2009. Amerika is a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado in Boulder where he is developing the TECHNE practice-based research initiative.

Stuart Moulthrop (http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/) Stuart Moulthrop is an award-winning artist, writer, and scholar of digital culture. He is currently Professor of Information Arts and Technologies at the University of Baltimore, where he teaches in the Bachelor of Science in Simulation and Digital Entertainment, as well as the Master's and Doctoral programs. His electronic literary works, beginning with the hypertext fiction Victory Garden in 1991, have drawn widespread critical attention. In a front-page article in the Mew York Times Book Review in 1993, Robert Coover called Victory Garden "the new benchmark" for digital literature and named Moulthrop the foremost practitioner and theorist of the craft. Coover later included this work, along with Michael Joyce's afternoon and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, in his "golden age" of early hypertext. Later projects, including "Hegirascope" (1995 and 1997), "Reagan Library" (1999), "Pax" (2003), "Deep Surface" (2007), and "Under Language" (2007), have been subjects of numerous studies and commentaries. "Pax" was selected for an international juried show. "Reagan Library" is included in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1, the first anthology of digital literature. "Deep Surface" and "Under Language" won the international Ciutat de Vinarós Prize, the former for narrative and the latter for poetry (ex aequo with Isaias Herrero Florensa's Universo Molecula). He has been a visiting fellow at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, and an adviser to the Information Technology University of Copenhagen.

Deena Larsen (http://www.deenalarsen.net) has long since given up on shaking the new media addiction. She has published numerous works and helps create more addicts to this new forum with chats and workshops, working with the Electronic Literature Organization and trAce. She has published over 30 works, ranging from in depth mystery novels like Disappearing Rain to poems and short stories. These appear in online journals such as the Iowa Review Web, Cauldron and Net, frAme, inFLECT, Blue Moon Review. Her latest projects include collaborating in pageSpace and a recent artist in residency at the Tristram Shandy Hall, which produced Shandean ambles, forthcoming in Drunken Boat.