Nadya Lev: Growing up in the USSR, I remember playing inside an empty scorched overturned bus, fishing through a dumpster that contained nothing but oily metal shavings and gas masks, and one day turning the wrong corner while lost on a kindergarten trip to stumble upon a large, steaming pile of dead fish (I hate seafood). Then I moved to America, and suddenly everything was safe and I was watching Disney, talking with a Jamaican accent because I was learning English from a jive-talking crab. Then school: owning two only pairs of community-donated sweatpants the year that all the other girls in school were wearing these. My only friends: books, magazines, records, art supplies. Those are the things that made me who I am today. Recently crash-landed in San Francisco, via London (long story). Interests include: fetish photography, writing, human nature. Contact: mint [at] sandwich [dot] net.
Meredith Yayanos: big hair and a bleeding heart. Voracious reader, compulsive writer, violin tamer, weird crap chronicler, theremin wrangler, bashful singer, shutterbugger, caffeine addict, and last but not least, recovering New Yorker. As bulldozers were razing all but the last remnants of Coney Island, I packed two steamer trunks full of boots and bloomers, cranked “Goin’ Out West” and hit the open road. Relocated to Oakland, CA for a couple of years, where I spent a lot of time riding my beloved Penny around Lake Merritt, making witchy-pooh folk music, laughing myself sick working on a demented kiddy pirate cartoon, and running away with the circus. Just recently I moved to Wellington, New Zealand to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a professional hobbit-fluffer. Life is strange and good. Contact: theremina [at] gmail [dot] com.
Zoetica Ebb: Painter, pencil pusher, model, photographer & cosmonomad. Born in Moscow of Russian and Uighur descent, I was raised by a troupe of gypsy scientists from space, who sold me to an American technological research facility in 1992. After a daring escape, I graduated from the LA County High School for the Arts, retreated into an underground studio where I studied with the revered Madame Von Kuntzertag, followed by a brief stint at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I’ve traveled the world gathering art and fashion expertise and am thrice certified as official Finesse Monitor to the Khan throne. I scheme & work on an excess of projects in my secret Angel City den surrounded by my beloved mannequins, paint fumes & a nano-companion named Micron. Interests include adventures, universe-trotting, various art forms, collecting odd medical tools, literature, dancing, arcane/ultramodern technology, and space-travel. Contact: zoetica [at] gmail [dot] com.
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Courtney Riot is an independent designer with a penchant for the avant-garde. Working in a variety of mediums, she is the Creative Director of Coilhouse magazine and the Art Director for SuicideGirls.com. She comes armed with a bitchin’ portfolio, passion, curiosity, and an ever-evolving skill-set. Continuing to blaze trails wherever life takes her, you can find her work in bookstores across the universe.
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Ross Rosenberg was born in Ripley, West Virginia in 1967, the third of four children born to Paul and Meredith Rosenberg. He graduated from Ripley High School and went on to attend Alfred University, graduating in 1989 with a degree in Glass Engineering Science and a minor in Women’s Studies. He currently lives with his wife and five armadillos on their farm in Clare, NY where he raises prize winning meat goats and oversees a lucrative methamphetamine operation.
David Forbes is a journalist, writer, lover of fine booze and a politics junkie, among other unsavory habits. His youth was spent in a very flat, beautifully strange place far from the sprawling urban labyrinths that increasingly came to dominate the world. Since that time, he’s been interested in taking things – personalities, cultures, symbols, events, social systems – apart to see how they work, and how they can change. He believes most lines are lies, most odds can be beaten, and, above all, that ideas still have power. In the future, if there are no job openings for post-apocalyptic tyrants, he hopes to become a very well-dressed dirty old man. He wants a trap-laden ziggurat for a tomb. Rumors aside, there will be no treasure within. David also blogs at The Breaking Time. Contact: ampersandpilcrow [at] hotmail [dot] com.
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Jeffrey Wengrofsky hosted TerrorSex Cabaret and Profiles of the Downtown Music Scene. Today, he is the Director and Producer of the Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers, and teaches at New York University. The Syndicate’s latest film, “The Party in Taylor Mead’s Kitchen” – a biopic on the Beat poet and Warhol Superstar – is now an Official Selection of DOC NYC 2011, the film festival of the Independent Film Channel. As part of a double feature, this film will make its intergalactic premiere on November 6th at NYU’s Kimmel Center and on November 7th at the Independent Film Center, New York. He was recently interviewed by Tablet magazine for a podcast on punk rock and Jewish history. You can summon him at dirtytrickpony [at] yahoo [dot] com. (Photo by Ian Couch.)
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Millennial Gepetto: Jessica Joslin spends most of her days at a Victorian watchmaker’s desk, building a menagerie out of brass and bone. She is an unabashed science nerd, antique hardware fetishist and power tool connoisseur. Known associates with the same last name include: husband Jared Joslin, a brilliant painter of dames and dreams and brother in law Russell Joslin, an incisive photographer of personae and the editor of Shots Magazine. Contact: jessica [at] jessicajoslin [dot] com.
Angeliska Polacheck is a southern girl of Eastern European, Irish and Romani descent. Born in the leafy, hidden groves of Austin, Texas, she dwelled for many years in the deep, dark, swampy city of New Orleans. She is an artist, curator, bon vivant, and spectacle-maker who plays ocean harp and deals in dusty curiosities and bric-à-brac. A writer and documenter of adventures, a (graphic/jewelry/costume) designer, an aspiring apiarist, and a lapsed lipstick luddite, Angel loves alliteration, brass bands (balkan/marching/second-line), sweet nectar sippin’, and Mardi Gras morning. She lives with a handsome blacksmith, as well as many animals and carnivorous plants, in a rambling old renovation project surrounded by a miniature orchard. You can visit the inside of her brainpan at www.angeliska.com.
S. Elizabeth is a shadow seamstress, star stitcher, word witch and weaver of the weird. A fancier of fine old things, nostalgic whimsies and magics both macabre and melancholy, she can be found here from time to time, gathering frippery and finery, grotesqueries and enchantments, prayers and poetics. Her further ramblings on pleasing terrors and warnings to the curious can be found here.
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When she’s not tapping out mad jigs on speakeasy counter tops, Tanya Vrodova enjoys a gentle life of easy chairs, well-worn footwear and bubbling pots of tea. Born on the grounds of a 15th century Muslim walled city, she has since made America her home, and continues to enjoy travels wherever the winds may take her. A professional dabbler through and through, Mme Vrodova looks forward to her return to the academic world next fall to pursue graduate studies as an archivist. Her memoir, which includes encounters with gypsies, circus performers and Vietnamese border guards, is currently in the works. Visit her at www.stayfortea.com.
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Sarah Hassan is a writer and dancer living in New York. A former Peace Corps volunteer to Mongolia, Sarah is the associate editor for ArtWrit and a guest teacher for the dance department at Sarah Lawrence College, of where she is also a graduate. She regularly appears with the ‘Weimar punk’ band, Amour Obscur, as their built-in showgirl and belly dancer. When not at work on a novel about the demise of a demented traveling cabaret, Sarah can be found perfecting her tricks on the flying trapeze and collecting old silver. Her writing has appeared on Monkey Bicycle, This Recording, Dogz Plot and in the catalog of Orientalist Pictures and Works of Art for Bonhams auction house. She is an excellent pen pal and can be reached at smariehassan at gmail dot com.
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Irene Kaoru was found under a mushroom in the damp forests of the Pacific Northwest by a kindly professor, who brought her home and raised her as his own. She languished in Seattle, longing to find others of her kind, until one day a black ship appeared on the horizon, shooting guns from its bow. Instantly recognizing her as the lost pirate faerie princess, the zombie captain invited her aboard and gave her a ride to New York. Now, Irene is a graphic designer, photographer, model and artist. She can be found here.
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Mildred Von: wanI’ DaSov: DaH maHvaD narghlaw’pu’bogh ben ta’ma’ Hay’meH qaDta’ DuraS pIn, vortIbraS, ghaH tungHa’mo’ Hembogh DujDaj. ‘ej Hay’DI’, vortIbraSvetlh tlhIvqu’ HoH ta’ Hamlet yoHqu’ — yoHqu’ ghaH, ‘e’ noH mIchvam Hoch ngan. vaj ra’mo’ may’ mab’e’ lu’olchu’pu’bogh chutmey, batlh lurDech je, yInDaj ghajHa’pu’DI’, Hoch SepDaj’e’ nIteb ben charghbogh ghaH, ghajHa’nIS ghaH tungHa’mo’ vortIbraSvetlh.
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Wayne Chambliss is a poet. He has also been a salesman, an entrepreneur, a translator, a grocer, an inventor, an investment analyst, a technology strategist, a retail manager, a scientific research assistant, a chess tutor, and a librarian. Last year he ran a marathon, by himself, around a 400m track; 105 laps, all in one direction, half of them in the rain. Contact: waynechambliss [at] gmail [dot] com.
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copyranter has been a New York City advertising copywriter for 16 years, all at the same ad agency. He hates Capri pants. And advertising.
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