James Ragan reading “The Hunger Wall” from Rattapallax 5.

James Ragan is the author of five books of poetry including In The Talking Hours, Womb-Weary, The World Sholdering “I”, The Hunger Wall and Lusions, from Grove Press, as well as co-editor of Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s Collected Poems. Director of the Graduate Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, he is a former NEA grant recipient and Fulbright Professor of Poetry. He has read his poetry for four heads of state including Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel and is featured in Rhino Records, In Thier Own Voices. He is a contributing editor to Rattapallax.

Jeanne Marie Beaumont reading “Hotel Grimm” from Rattapallax 6,

Jeanne Marie Beaumont earned her MFA from Columbia University. Her poems have been published in seven anthologies and over fifty magazines and newspapers including Boston Review, DoubleTake, Harper’s, The Manhattan Review, The Nation, New American Writing, Pleiades, Verse, and Witness. She won the Greensboro Review Literary Award for Poetry in 2003. She is the coeditor of The Poets’ Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales (Story Line, 2003). Her first book of poems was selected for the National Poetry Series by William Matthews. She teaches at Rutgers University and at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and she has also served several times as resident faculty for the Frost Place Annual Festival of Poetry. She has lived in New York City since 1983.

Meean Alexander reading “Bengali Market” from Rattapallax 10.

Meena Alexander was born in India, raised there and in Sudan. At eighteen she went to study in England. Her first poems were published when she was a teenager in Sudan, in Arabic translation.. She has read at Poetry International London, Struga Poetry Evenings, Poetry Africa, Calabash Festival, Harbor Front Festival, Poetry Society, India and other international gatherings. She is Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York and teaches in the MFA program at Hunter College and the Ph.D.Program at the Graduate Center.

Alberto Martins’ solo show “Eem Transito” at Estacao Pinacoteca” in Sao Paulo, Brasil in September 2007. Download for ipod.

Alberto Martins is a poet and visual artist. His books include Cais (poetry, Editora 34, 2002), Goeldi: história de horizonte (MAC/Paulinas, 1995 – winner of Jabuti Prize for best literature book for young adults), and Poemas (poetry, Ed. Duas Cidades, 1990).