Sharon Harris is a writer and artist living in Toronto.  Her first book of visual and verbal poems (+ a manifesto), AVATAR , was launched by The Mercury Press in 2006 (preview: http://www.iloveyougalleries.com/gallery3.htm ).  She is working on a cross-cultural study of the words, "I love you" that will someday manifest as an illustrated book. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and television across Canada. Sharon has been photographing the Toronto literary scene for five years (129 events as of December 06), and will be very happy to take pictures of everyone in Buffalo for a change.  Her online home is www.iloveyougalleries.com .

Rachel Zolf's third book of poetry, Human Resources , is forthcoming in Spring 2007 from Coach House Books. Her second collection, Masque (The Mercury Press, 2004), was shortlisted for the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and her first book, Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks, 1999),  was a finalist in the CBC Literary Competition. Zolf's work has been published widely across Canada and in the U.S. in journals such as Pilot , Drunken Boat , EOAGH , MiPOesias , West Coast Line , Matrix , Tessera and Capilano Review . Belladonna* books put out a chapbook of Zolf's poetry in 2005 entitled from Human Resources , and her work also appears in the anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry . She lives in Toronto and was the founding poetry editor for The Walrus magazine.

Tom Mandel grew up in Chicago and was educated in its jazz and blues clubs and at the University of Chicago where he studied on the Committee on Social Thought with Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Harold Rosenberg and David Grene. He has published in dozens of newspapers, literary journals and anthologies, including the influential In the American Tree and The Norton Anthology of Post-Modern Verse . His most recent book, To the Cognoscenti , was published January 2007. He is co-author of the ongoing series The Grand Piano, an experiment in collective autobiography by ten poets associated with the rise of Language Poetry in San Francisco.

Bet ya didn't know that Rust Belt Books has their own theatre in back—perfect for hosting the Rust Belt Books Reading Series. Yup. Along with La Tee Da Restaurant, this building is always home to shows, poetry, readings, you name it. Rust Belt Books is located at 202 Allen Street in Buffalo. (716) 885-9535.