Ry Beville was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He was educated at the University of Notre Dame (B.A.), Nanzan University (one-year program), and the University of California, Berkeley (M.A.). Between 1997 and 2002, he lived in idyllic Fukuoka, Japan, where he worked at the Fukuoka International Exchange Foundation as a coordinator for international relations through the auspices of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. Thereafter, he worked as an English teacher with zero disciplinary authority and as a ronin translator. His colorful employment background also includes work as a travel writer and photographer throughout Japan, a bilingual radio DJ, and a bilingual wedding celebrant (he has married over two hundred couples, including his close friends). He is a black belt in karate (Ashihara International Karate) and a washed-up competitive swimmer. In his shrinking free time, he plays blues guitar and writes his own music. If his quixotic dream of an academic career does not materialize, he will be forced to become a rock star.

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Robert Hass, a San Francisco Bay Area native, took his B.A. from St. Mary's College (Moraga) and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Stanford University. He is the author of four books of poetry, a translator of poets ranging from Czeslaw Milosz to Matsuo Basho, and the editor of a number of other collections. The winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award (1972), two National Book Critics Circle Awards (for criticism in 1984 and poetry in 1996), and a MacArthur "genius" Gugenheim Fellowship, Bob teaches poetry in addition to courses in environmental studies at U.C. Berkeley. He knows the earth is good. As the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995-97, he campaigned against illiteracy and crisscrossed the country in poetic barnstorming. The faithful line up for blocks, and will wait for many moons, for a chance to meet the man. Someone give him an award for being so accessible and generous.

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Mack Horton is professor of classical Japanese language and literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his M.A. in 1981 from Harvard and his Ph.D. in 1989 from the U.C. Berkeley. As the over-worked department chair, he wistfully remembers life as it was. Winner of U.C. Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, Mack is a living, breathing Renaissance man. Besides his prize-winning The Journal of Sôchô, and a companion volume, Song in an Age of Discord, Mack is the translator of ten books on Japanese literature, history and architecture. His forthcoming book, Traversing the Frontier: The Silla Envoy Poems of Man’yôshû is certain to be a tour de force. Mack also lives a secret life as a trumpet virtuoso. Eye witnesses of his live performances claim, trembling, “Mack don’t fake the funk on a nasty dunk.” Nobody knows how many languages Mack really speaks.

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Ishimatsu Yuki is head Japanese librarian of the U.C. Berkeley East Asian library collection, the largest Japanese academic library outside Japan. He took his B.A. from Keio University and his M.L.S. from the University of Maryland. He is the spitting image of the rugged Marlboro man, and actually, the real thing; an equestrian enthusiast, he has ridden horses since his youth- despite being a thoroughbred Tokyoite. A translator and author of several books, including his popular Amerika hotaru, Ishimatsu continues to work on the cartographical digitization project for the Japanese historical map collection. Having amassed nearly a thousand rare maps, he is striving to make these available on-line with this project.

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Taylor Mignon is from Lincoln (Nebraska), "Shallow River," Turtle Island, born of two teachers: Mary Anne Mignon, a retired special education teacher at high school and omnivorous reader of biographies; Charles William Mignon, a retired American and English Literature professor and scholar of Puritan poet priest Edward Taylor, Taylor's namesake. Mignon double majored in English and Asian Studies at Coe College, with a year abroad at Waseda University, and completed an Individualized Master of Arts in Creative Writing with Antioch University, studying poetry with Cid Corman, Morgan Gibson, Makoto Ryu and Wayne Pounds. He advised the editing of a special Japan issue for Prairie Schooner (1996) and most recently co-edited a Japanese bilingual poetry section for "Vallum: contemporary poetry." His current book projects are on Japanese visual poetry and the translation of poetry by Torii Shozo. He enjoys clumsily playing at goalkeeper for the nearly elderly Tokyo Metropolis League BFC second team, the Vagabonds.

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Omoto Yasuhiro was raised in Yamaguchi and Akita prefectures in Japan, and is a long-time lecturer in Japanese at the University of California, Berkeley. He has developed an impressive website of resources for Japanese students and teachers at www.nihongoweb.com. Omoto-sensei has published numerous academic papers on linguistics, language-learning and related technology. While he adamantly refuses to divulge any information about his educational background, interested cyber-stalkers can cull much from his website. Living on a lively cocktail of caffeine, sugar and traditional Japanese ballads, Omoto-sensei is super genki, and loved by his students and colleagues alike.

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Urayama Hiromi was born in Osaka, Japan but lived much of her childhood in London, making her tri-lingual (English, Japanese, and that rambunctious Osaka dialect). After taking her legal studies degree from a Tokyo University, and briefly working in a legal affairs office, she abandoned a life in law for her true talent: teaching. Since receiving her M.A. from San Francisco State University, she has been a lecturer in Japanese at U.C. Berkeley. Her style of reading poetry stems from an anomalous period of her youth when she was obliged to practice three times a day for an oration of the classic poetic anthology hyakuninisshû.

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Abbie Yamamoto was born in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward, and raised in Tsukuba. She left Japan at the age of seventeen to attend Pearson College and later Barnard College, where she received her B.A. in comparative literature. A PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley in Japanese literature, she is interested in colonial Korean writers and has spent a year studying in Seoul. The constellations conspired to make her Japanese, Jewish and vegetarian at the same time, and she is not afraid to celebrate her swirliness. Good for her. Help her procrastinate by patronizing her blog: ルナ・ワールド

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