PHIL COUSINEAU

is a writer, filmmaker, photographer, teacher, sports coach,

and adventure tour leader. He has published eighteen books, including the

internationally acclaimed The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell,

The Art of Pilgrimage, and Once and Future Myths, and three books of poetry,

Deadlines: Rhapsody on a Theme of Famous Last Words, The Blue Museum and the

soon to be released, Night Train.

Cousineau has also written fifteen documentary films, including Forever

Activists, nominated for an Academy Award, in 1991, and most recently, with

Huston Smith, A Seat at the Table: Struggling for American Indian Religious

Freedom, in 2004.

RB MORRIS,

Poet, singer, songwriter, musician, and playwright, hails from

Knoxville, Tennessee. In the 1980's he edited an arts and literary tabloid,

Hard Knoxville Review, which attracted a cult following in this country and

in Europe. He has published two volumes of poetry, The Man Upstairs (1998) and

Littoral Zone (2004). He also wrote a one-man play, The Man Who Lives Here

Is Loony (1992), about the turbulent life of writer James Agee, and recently

played Agee in productions of the play both at the University of Tennessee

and at the Cornelia Street Café NYC. In recent years Morris has been a

celebrated recording artist. His CDs include Take That Ride, Knoxville Sessions, and

Zeke and the Wheel. Lucinda Williams has called him "the greatest unknown

songwriter in the country".  RB Morris has been called an "Appalachian

Rimbaud" and "a cross between a rural Tom Waits and an urban Woody Guthrie".

And Steve Earle credits

him with "RB Morris is the reason I started writing poetry."  Morris is

currently the Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee.

SHARON DOUBIAGO

a native of California,

has written two dozen books, most notably, the epic poems Hard

Country, and South America Mi Hija.  Two collections

of poetry, Psyche Drives The Coast and Body and Soul

have won numerous awards, including the Oregon Book

Award for Poetry and two Pushcart Prizes.  She is also

the author of the story collections, El Nino (Lost

Roads) and The Book of Seeing With One's Own Eyes

(Graywolf), a story from which won a third Pushcart,

and which in 2005 was selected to the list, Literary

Oregon, 100 Books, 1800-2000.  She has just completed

her childhood memoir, My Father's Love/Portrait of the

Poet as a Girl, an excerpt of which is in The Santa

Monica Review, Spring 2005 and Love on the Streets,

New and Selected Poems.  Her latest published book is

Sharon Doubiago Greatest Hits 1976-2003, from Pudding

House Publications. (www.puddinghouse.com.)  A 2002

California Arts Council Fellowship Award enabled these

works.  Currently she is teaching in the Poetic's

Program at New College and as an online mentor in

Creative Writing for the University of Minnesota.

She lives in San Francisco and Mendocino

GERALD NICOSIA

is the author of MEMORY BABE: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF JACK

KEROUAC, HOME TO WAR: A HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM VETERANS' MOVEMENT, and several books of poetry.  For the past 30 years he has been part of the

post-Beat circle of writers in the Bay Area.