Roberta Beary lived in Tokyo for five years of haiku study. Her individual poems, often a hybrid of haiku and senryu, have been honored throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Her book The Unworn Necklace (Snapshot Press, 2007, reprinted in hardback in 2010) was selected as a William Carlos Williams Book Award finalist (Poetry Society of America). It was also a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award prize winner. She and her husband live near Washington, DC.

Deborah P Kolodji moderates the Southern California Haiku Study Group and is the president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. The author of four chapbooks of poetry, she is a winner of the Virgil Hutton Haiku Memorial Award. Her haiku, longer poetry, memoirs, and short stories have appeared in the Red Moon Anthology, New Resonance 4, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Bottle Rockets, The Rhysling Anthology, Star*Line, Strange Horizons, Mainichi Daily News, Comstock Review, Pearl, Poeticdiversity, Chicken Soup for the Dieter’s Soul, Thema, and elsewhere.

Victor Ortiz lives near the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, California with his wife Mimi. He received his Ph.D. in Classics from UCLA and works as the associate director of academic technology at an independent school in Los Angeles. A member of the Southern California Haiku Study Group since 2002, his work has appeared in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, World Haiku Review, Bottle Rockets, Acorn, Noon, Roadrunner, and Mainichi Daily News. Some of his awards include the Scorpion Prize, runner up in Haiku Now! International Haiku Contest, Traditional Category, and an honorable mention in the Mainichi Haiku Contest.

 Ebba Story has had her prose and poetry appear in various haiku journals and anthologies, the Christian Science Monitor, and on the BBC. Since 1991 she has been an active member of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, serving several terms as secretary and newsletter editor. For two years she was associate editor of Woodnotes and she currently coedits Mariposa, HPNC’s literary journal. Her haiku classes and workshops have been presented in the wider Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle. As a member of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, she regularly composes articles with original haiku for the “Challenge Kigo” section of Geppo, their bimonthly publication.