MICHAEL McCLURE is a Bay Area countercultural icon whose numerous works include Dark Brown, Ghost Tantras (which he famously read to the lions at the San Francisco Zoo), the play The Beard, albums with Ray Manzarek, one-time pianist with the Doors, and with Terry Riley, a repubication of The Booobus and the Bunnyduck, a 1957 children’s book made with the artist Jess, and, most recently, a collection of poems called Rain Mirror.

ELIZABETH MARIE YOUNG This summer, Elizabeth Marie Young’s full-length book, Aim Straight at the Fountain and Press Vaporize, won the Motherwell Prize from Fence Books (it will come out in 2009), and Omahrahu Prss published a chapbook of her Sonnets. She is finishing her PhD in Comparative Literature in Berkeley, and will join the Classical Studies Department at Wellesley College in January.