Author bio: Lena Vanelslander swam many waters; history, comparative culture analysis, languages. It all pertained to her study. Self-study however remained the most important thing, Mythology, Literature, Poetry, too many to sum up. Her career in poetry started briefly by a prize for European Poetry when she was eight but she remained writing more passively in her native language untill her twenties. After a life of tribulations the turning point came in her mid twenties: she started to write actively poetry in English and was showered with positive critique. Her melancholic and darkminded nature colour her poems to an individual signature in both time and space. Several poems got published, mainly in the Stray Branch, The Delinquent and Savage Manners. Her first chapbook ‘Ma Chanson de Rien du Tout’ has been released August 2009. This work of poetry and finesse, art, contain her first amount of prior unreleased poetry. Besides writing poetry she became also active in networking for poetry and spoken word. She has joined the association of ‘De Schuunschgreivers’ in Ghent, an alternative writing group pertaining to ‘Bij De Vieze Gasten’. She actively seeks to engage even more for poetry and art, but does face one boundary: in Belgium most poetry-associations only honour Dutch poetry. Therefore her commitment is more worldwide and webdirected. You can find her on the main social networking sites of this age. The future? The future is yet to be told. The story of her life continues each day, with each step made. To maintain a dream is one thing, to realise it another. Consider this work the realisation of a dream!

Author bio: Marilyn Campiz is a self-described life adventurer, an ordinary woman who has done extraordinary things. Her journies have taken her around the world where she became entranced with the universal themes that both plague and pleasure humanity. Her life experience has taken her from the stages in Europe to a broadcasting booth in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a youth to 20 years of service in the US Air Force. She views her present role, of ex-patriot English teacher in Deagu, South Korea, as just the beginning of another chapter in her life. A life long writer and poet, striving to go beyond what has rendered before. Bringing the conversation back, to what is poetry or form. She has contributed to literary magazines, expatriot journals, art projects and is the author of The Paris Diaries and the poetess of The Erotic Writings of Unobtainable. Inspired by the words of Arthur Rimbaud, Henry Miller, Jim Morrison, Poe and Faulkner, with a heavy wink to Orwellian thought. “In an age where hope and truth are rare commodities. Where fraud and corruption have poisoned our waters. When thoughts are consumed with fear...we now see the illusions of all we once held dear are phantoms.”