Editors

Editor: Batya Weinbaum

Founding Co-Editor: Robin Anne Reid

Book Review Editor: Edrie Sobstyl

Past Associate Editor: Ritch Calvin

Advisory Board: Suzy Charnas, Florence Howe, Joanna Russ, Pamela Sargent

Contributing Editors: Marleen S. Barr, Samuel R. Delany, Gloria Orenstein, Darko Suvin

Editorial Board: Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawaii-Manoa), Beatriz Badikian (Roosevelt University), William Clemente (Peru State College) ,Theresa Crater (Metropolitan StateCollege of Denver), Kathe Davis (Kent State University), Joan Gordon (Nassau Community College), Veronica Hollinger (Trent University), Phillipa Kafka (Professor Emerita), Sylvia Kelso (James Cook University), Laurel Lampela (University of New Mexico), Claudia Mesch (Arizona State University), Lynne Reed (HOWL), Gina Wisker (Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge)

Editorial Consultants: Sima Aprahamian, Brian Attebury, Bruce Beatie, Christine Boyko-Head, Cheryl Brooke, Elizabeth Pandolfo Briggs, Marcus Casal, Debra Rae Cohen, Tama Engleking, Mary Fambrough, Kass Fleisher, Sibelian Forrester, Joanne Gallivan, John Gerlach, Annie Jovan-Westlund, Susan Kornfield, Randal Knoper, Helen M. Kress, Ted Lardner, David Larson, Antonio Medina-Rivera, Patricia Melzer, Liora Moriel, Diana Orendi, Donna Phillips, Ruth Schwartz, Carol Stevens, Alana Suskind

---Biographies---

Batya Weinbaum taught multicultural literature at Cleveland State University, 1998-2003 and currently edits the journal at home as well as researching and writing for Women Review of Books, WeMoon, various encylopedias, and continuing to publish her own critical and creative work. She received her PhD from University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1996, and a Masters from SUNY Buffalo in American Studies in 1986. She has published Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations and Realities (U of Texas Press, 1999) and two books of feminist theory with South End Press, and a collection of short stories with Clothespin Fever. Her critical work has appeared in such journals as NWSAJournal, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Utopian Studies, Monthly Review, Review of Radical Political Economics, Extrapolation, Science Fiction Studies, Foundation, Women in Judaism, Biography, Frontiers, and Studies in Progressive Judaism as well as Peace Review. She has also published fiction and poetry in venues such as Home Planet News, Spectrum, Key West Review, Feminist Review, Town Crier, Big Fish, and ThoughtCrime. She is the mother of one, Ola, and in the summer really craves VT. She is working on an eight act play, Waiting for Justice, and completion of a novel, Mirages and Nightmares: Sasha Weitzwoman in the Mad Hotel, which is about Jerusalem. She works with the Cleveland Heights Homegrown Learners Cooperative, and lectures on such topics as Ecopsychology and Healing. She sells her own art online at reclamationproject.info, and wearable arts products at redserpentarts.com. Proceeds help to support the functioning of the journal.

Robin Reid received her doctorate degree from the Univeristy of Washington in 1992, and she is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the Texas A&M University-Commerce. She has published both Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion and Arthur C. Clarke: A Critical Companion. Her essays have appeared in Science Fiction Studies, SFRA Review, Feminist Nightmares, and Diversity: A Journal of Multicultural Issues.

Ritch Calvin is currently an Instructor of Women's Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. He holds a PhD in Comparative Studies (with a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies). His dissertation, entitled, "A Feminism of Their Own: Escritoras mexicanas, Chicana Writers and Autochthonous Feminisms," examines the feminism of four writers: Rosario Castellanos, Brianda Domecq, Gloria Anzaldúa and Ana Castillo. He has written on a variety of topics and writers, including, Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, and C. J. Cherryh. His publications have appeared in Enculturation, Feminism in a Multi-Cultural Context, and SFRA Review.

Born in Manhattan, New York, Suzy McKee Charnas was educated at Barnard College and New York University. The writer of original and highly regarded novels, she was awarded the Nebula Award, Mythopoetic Society Award for a best children's book, and a Gilgamesh Award for best fantasy stories. Her "Boobs," a short story, won the Hugo Award in 1989. A noted History and English teacher in a girl's high school in Nigeria, Suzy Charnas also served in the United States Peace Corps. Her books include: The Slave and the Free (Orb 1999), The Conqueror's Child (Tor 1999), The Furies (Tor Books 1994), Dorothea Dreams (Arbor House 1986), and The Bronze King (Houghton 1985).

Born in New York, Florence Howe was educated at Hunter College, Smith College, and the University of Wisconsin. From the many positions that she has held, Howe was a lecturer in English, a professor of English, and the founder and president of the Feminist Press. As a writer, editor, and publisher, she won the awards of the National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship in 1971-73, many other fellowships, including the Ford Foundation Fellowship for the study of women in.society, and the Hall of Fame honor at Hunter College. As a contributer to the field of women's studies and feminist scholarship, Florence Howe has made a unique and critical voice for the American feminist movement, especially as founder of the Feminist Press.

Born in New York, Joanna Russ was educated at Cornell University and Yale University. She held many positions as a lecturer in speech, assistant professor of English, and professor of English at the University of Washington. Combining a feminist'perspective and a sophisticated style in writing science fiction novels, Joanna has become the recipient of the Nebula Awards, Hugo Award, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 1974-75. From her many short stories, "When It Changed," won a Science Fiction Writers of America Award in 1972. Her The Female Man, published in 1975 remains a classic in feminist science fiction. Her other books include: What Are We Fighting For?: Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism (St. Martin's Press 1998), To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism, and Science Fiction (Indiana University Press 1995) Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays (Crossing Press 1985), Kittatinny: A Tale of Magic (Daughters Publishing 1978), and Alyx (G. K. Hall 1976).

Pamela Sargent (1948 --) is the author of numerous novels and short stories, and she has edited a number of anthologies. Among her novels are Cloned Lives (1976), The Golden Space (1982), The Alien Upstairs (1983), Eye of the Comet (1984), The Shore of Women (1986), and Heart of the Sun (1997). She has also authored the popular Venus series, which includes the novels, Venus of Dreams (1986), Venus of Shadows (1988), and Child of Venus (2000). Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov's, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, If, Orbit, and Universe. The short fiction has also appeared in a number of collections, including Starshadows (1977), The Best of Pamela Sargent (1987), Behind the Eyes of Dreamers and Other Short Novels (2002), and The Mountain Cage and Other Stories (2002). Among her edited collections are Bio-Futures (1976), Women of Wonder (1975), More Women of Wonder (1976), The New Women of Wonder (1978), Women of Wonder: The Classic Years (1995), and Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years (1995). Sargent has contributed several books to the Star Trek universe.

Paula Gunn Allen (1939- 2008), a poet, novelist, and editor, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and grew up in Cubero, New Mexico. She received a bachelor's degree in English (1966) and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing (1968) from the University of Oregon. She received her doctorate in American studies with an emphasis on Native American literature (1975) from the University of New Mexico. Her books of poetry include The Blind Lion (1974), A Cannon between My Knees (1981), Shadow Country (1982), and Life Is a Fatal Disease (1996). Her novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows was published in 1983. In addition, she has contributed to The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986), Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook (1991), As Long as the Rivers Flow: The Stories of 9 Native Americans (with Patricia Clark Smith) (1996). Finally, she has edited From the Center: A Folio: Native American Art and Poetry (1981), Studies in American Indian Literature: Critical Essays and Course Design (1983). Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women (1990), Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1900-1970 (1994), and Song of the Turtle: American Indian Literature, 1974-1995 (1996). Memorial Site: http://www.paulagunnallen.net/

Marleen S. Barr is a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. She won the 1997 Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Her most recent book is Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies.

Samuel Delany, born in New York, attended the City College in New York, 1960, and 1962-63. As a writer, he won the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Samuel Delany is also a noted author of scripts, a director, and an editor for two short films. His best novel is Babel-17, a winner of the Science Fiction Writers of America Award in 1966. Samuel Delany has also earned the notation as the innovative and imaginative science fiction writer of today. He currently teaches Queer Studies at Temple University. His other books include The Bridge of Lost Desire (Arbor House 1987), Dhalgren (University Press of New England 1996), Atlantis: Three Tales (Wesleyan University Press 1995), The Star Pits (Tor Books 1989), and Equinox (Masquerade 1994).

Gloria Orenstein received her Ph.D. in 1971 from NYU, a Masters in 1961 from Radcliffe, and a BA in 1959 from Brandeis. She is a tenured professor in the Deptartment of Comparative Literature at University of Southern California, where she also works in Gender Studies. She has previously taught at Douglass College of Rutgers University, and organized the NYC Women's Salon in the 1970s. She is active in the field of ecofeminism, and has published numerous articles on literature, art, ecofeminism, shamanisn and religion Her books published include Multicultural Celebrations: The Paintings of Betty LaDuke (1993), The Reflowering of the Goddess (1990), Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism (1990), and The Theater of the Marvelous: Surrealism and the Contemporary Stage (1975).

Darko Suvin was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at McGill University in Montreal until he retired. He is also an author of Russian Science Fiction in 1956-1974, and other works. He serves FEMSPEC as a Contributing Editor and a noted author. His books include the ground breaking Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979), Victorian Science Fiction in the UK: The Discourses of Knowledge and Power (1983), and To Brecht and Beyond (1984). For several years he also edited Science-Fiction Studies.

A part of the faculty of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Cristina Bacchilega is a Professor in the Department of English. She received a B.A. from the University of Rome, Italy, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She also is a writer of contemporary fiction, folklore, fairy tales, and feminist theory. Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellow in 2001, the Board of Regents' Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1991, and the College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature Excellence in Teaching Award in 1988. Cristina has published on Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Maxine Hong Kingston, women writers and the fairy tale, and fairy tales in Hawaii. Her current work includes a study of the representation of place in twentieth-century narratives that adapt native Hawaii's traditional stories. She is also the reveiw editor of Marvels & Tales: Jouranl of Fairy-Tale Studies.

Beatriz Badikian was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has resided in Chicago since 1970. In 1994 Badikian earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she specialized in poetry and multiethnic literature. Since 1994 Badikian has been a faculty member at Roosevelt University where she teaches literature., writing, and women's studies. Her publications include: Mapmaker Revisited. (Gladsome 1999); Mapmaker (Red Triangle 1994); Akewa is a Woman and Other Poems (Abrazo Press 1989). Her poems have also been translated and published in India, Greece, Mexico, Argentina, and Canada.

Since 1992, Bill Clemente has taught at Peru State College in southeastern Nebraska, where he is a Professor and Chair of English. His teaching schedule includes a variety of courses, including Non-Western Literature, Film Studies, Creative Writing, and World Literature. A few years ago, he introduced a composition course that focuses on Science Fiction, which he tries to teach once a year. Director of the college's Honors Program, he also offers a course on Asian Literature. A reader of sf for nearly forty years, Bill has been a fan and a student of Feminist sf for the past decade and some change. He was also a judge for the James Tiptree Award, which honors gender-bending Speculative Fiction. His publications in that area include essays on James Tiptree, Jr. and Suzy Charnas. Bill and his wife, Linda, are also the authors of a biography of one of Canada's premier authors: Gabrielle Roy: Creation and Memory. In addition, Bill is an avid bird watcher and the editor of The Nebraska Bird Review.

Theresa Crater did her undergraduate work in English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the school where you can throw a rock and it will hit at least two writers. Then, Theresa studied Vedic philosophy and taught meditation until she ran out of money. Deciding she did not want to be a secretary for the rest of her life, she returned to graduate school and received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, in beautiful, rainy Seattle. Theresa's first teaching job was in the Writing Center at the Evergreen State College, the alternative school that had the distinction of being slated for closure by right-wing state senators every four years until it gained aninternational reputation. Theresa went on to teach humanities and writing at South Puget Sound Community College. Seeking the sun, she moved to Colorado and has been at Metropolitan State College of Denver since 1992. Theresa has written one novel, God in a Box, about her experiences in the meditation movements of the 1970s, and is working on a second, Key to the Halls, an Egyptian mystery. She has edited a composition reader, Outside the Box, looking at paradigm shifts in various disciplines, due out from Longman in 2003. Her scholarly writings have focused mainly on Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing and The X-Files.

Kathe Davis is Director of Women's Studies at Kent State University in Ohio, where she teaches women's writing, contemporary poetry and gender issues. She has published on early science fiction, popular film, Ursula Le Guin and Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich, Randall Jarrell, Robert Bly, and, most copiously, on John Berryman. Besides the topics above, she has presented papers on Rita Dove, Louise Bogan, Jane Cooper, Ani di Franco, Elizabeth Bishop, Hitler, masculinity studies, addiction, Stephen King, feminist sword and sorcery, nexialism, and the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, where she was a delegate at the NGO Forum. She is on the editorial board of Extrapolation, and has guest-edited a special issue on Women and Science Fiction, as well as writing numerous reviews. Her poems have appeared in Hurricane Alice (Providence), the collections Opening Doors and Great Lake Erie: Imagining an Inland Sea, and in such Cleveland-area little magazines as Art Crimes, The Coventry Reader, and The Time of Your Life. She is also included in A Gathering of Poets (1991), the anthology commemorating the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State. She lives in the woods of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park with her partner and two cats.

Joan Gordon is an Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College. She is an editor of Science Fiction Studies and has co-edited two volumes of scholarly essays for UPenn with Veronica Hollinger, Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (1987) and Edging Into the Future: Science Fiction as Contemporary Cultural Transformation (forthcoming).

Veronica Hollinger is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. She is co-editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies and Vice-President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts and has published many articles on science fiction and speculative literature, especially feminist and postmodern fantastic fiction. With Joan Gordon, she has co-edited Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press 1997) and Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation (University of Pennsylvania Press 2002). She is a past winner of the SFRA's Pioneer Award.

Phillipa Kafka is currently Professor Emerita at Kean University, Union, New Jersey, and the former Director of its Women's Studies Program. An active participant in the Second-Wave feminist movement, she was also a pioneer in multi-ethnic studies. She has published essays, reviews, poetry, and four full-length works of feminist literary criticism: The Great White Way: African-American Women Writers and American Success Mythology (Garland, 1993); (Un)Doing the Missionary Position: Gender Asymmetry in Contemporary Asian American Women's Writings (Greenwood, 1997); (Out)Classed Women: Contemporary Chicana Writers on Inequitable Gendered Power Relations (Greenwood, 2000); and "Saddling LaGringa": Gatekeeping in Contemporary Latina Writers (Greenwood, 2000). Most recently, she edited a collection of memoirs and essays, Lost on the Map ofthe World: Jewish-American Women's Quest for Home, 1890-Present (Peter Lang, 2001).

Sylvia Kelso is currently a part-time lecturer and tutor at James Cook University in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia. She has taught English there since 1985 and in addtion is currently contributing to a course on Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Social Sciences school. She has published poetry, including a contribution to an Australian Women's Anthology, and essays, and reviews on fantasy, science fiction, modern female Gothic or mystery novels and modern male horror writers like Stephen King. Her essays have appeared in Science-Fiction Studies, Foundation, the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Para.Doxa: Studies in World Literature, and The New York Review of Science Fiction. She is currently an editorial board member for Para.Doxa. She has a PhD on the interaction of feminism with modern Gothic and science fiction, and has just submitted a Creative Writing MA based round an sf novel set in alternate North Queenslands. A long-term creative writer, she is also working on publication of a fantasy novel.

Dr. Laurel Lampela is an Associate Professor who teaches courses in the History of Art Education, Secondary Art Methods, Studio Art in the Schools - Printmaking, and Feminism and Art. She has been on the faculty at UNM since August 2001. Previously she was Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio for 10 years and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Marshall University for one year. Dr. Lampela is co-editor of "From Our Voices: Art Educators Speak Out About LGBT Issues" [Lampela, L. & Check, E., (Eds.), 2003, Kendall- Hunt Publishers]. She has published a book chapter in "Realworld Readings in Art Education: Things Your Professors Never Told You" (2000, Falmer Press) and numerous articles in "Studies in Art Education," "Art Education," and "Taboo: A Journal of Culture and Education." Dr. Lampela is the co-founder of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Issues Caucus of the National Art Education Association.

Claudia Mesch teaches 20th- and 21st-century art history and art theory at Arizona State University. Her research and publications have focused on performance-oriented art after 1945. Among other things, she is currently thinking about the appearance of the Queen of Mud and other female sci-fi personas in recent art.

As an undergraduate at Tufts University, Lynne Reed studied in 16 different departments, reflecting her multidisciplinary mind. Graduating in 1978 with a BA in Drama, she focused primarily on theatrical lighting in NYC for many years, fast forwarding through Textile Design, Owner of a Multicultural Spiritual Bookstore, and Teaching in the NYC Public School System. Leaving the fast track, Lynne is currently living at Spiral, a lesbian intentional community, with the time to edit, write and paint. For info on retreat cabins, e-mail spiralwimmin@juno.com.

Gina Wisker is coordinator of Women's Studies at Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge, UK where she is also director of learning and teaching development and teaches English literature. Her publications range from postcolonial: Postcolonial and African and American Women's Writing: A Critical Introduction (Macmillan 2000), Insights into Black Women's Writing (Macmillan 1993), to horror and fantasy: It's My Party: Reading Twentieth Century Women's Writing (ed.1994), Fatal Attractions: Rescripting Romance in Contemporary Literature and Film (ed.Lynne Pearce 1998), and several essays on women's vampire fictions in, among others, The Companion to Gothic (ed. David Punter), and on Angela Carter, and she co-edits Spokes, a poetry magazine. She was brought up all over the world , re-visits and travels at every oppportunity and lives in Cambridge UK with her husband, two sons, and two small dogs. She is currently editing a women's horror edition of FEMSPEC.