Adrian Castro is a poet, performer, and interdisciplinary artist. Born in Miami, a place which has provided fertile ground for the rhythmic Afro-Latino style in which he writes and performs. Articulating the search for a cohesive Afro-Caribbean-American identity, Castro honors myth on one hand and history on the other. He addresses the migratory experience from Africa to the Caribbean to North America, and the eventual clash of cultures. Castro creates a circular motion of theme, tone, subject matter, style, and cultural history, giving rise to a fresh illuminating archetypal poetry. These themes reach their climax in their declamacion – the call-and-response rhythm of performance with a whole lot of tun-tun ka-ka pulse. He is the author of Cantos to Blood & Honey(Coffee House Press, 1997), Wise Fish: Tales in 6/8 Time(Coffee House Press, 2005), and has been published in many literary anthologies. He is the recipient of the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, NewForms Florida, the Eric Mathieu King award from the Academy of American Poets, NALAC Arts Fellowship, and several commissions from Miami Light Project and the Miami Art Museum. He has performed with many dancers and actors including Chuck Davis and African American Dance Ensemble, Heidi Duckler and Collage Dance, and Keith Antar Mason and the Hittite Empire. The New York Times Book Review recently selected Wise Fish as an editor’s choice saying, “Sinuous, syncopated verses about the Caribbean melting pot.” And “…even a cursory glance suggests his poems—which seem to be trying to dance off the page…would truly come alive on the stage. “Wise Fish” is a serious and seriously enjoyable contribution to our flourishing Latino literature.” Adrian Castro is also a Babalawo and herbalist.

Rita Wong's first book of poetry, monkeypuzzle (Press Gang 1998) delves into family, history, and desire, searching to lay bare the boundaries of class, race, and home. Her second book, entitled forage (forthcoming this fall with Nightwood Editions), explores the experience of living in a time of “body burden” and environmental crisis. (“Body burden” refers to hundreds of new chemicals found in most human bodies after World War II.) Poems from forage have appeared in anthologies such as Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literatures in English (Oxford University Press 2007), The Common Sky: Canadian Writers Against the War (Three Squares 2003), Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury Press 2005), and in journals such as West Coast Line, XCP (Cross-Cultural Poetics), Massachusetts Review, Ms., ARIEL, etc. Focusing her doctoral dissertation on representations of labor in Asian North American literature, she completed her PhD in the English Department at Simon Fraser University. Also an activist and critic, Wong is an Assistant Professor in the Critical + Cultural Studies Program at the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada. A recipient of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop Emerging Writer Award, she is a visiting instructor this semester in the University of Miami's Department of English.

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