H. Shaw Cauchy lived in Mexico for eleven years where she worked as an archivist in the historical library of a southern Catholic diocese. Since returning to the States she has taught Spanish to Montessori preschoolers as well as college students, and is currently a book critic for Foreword magazine. She recently won first prize in the 1999 Dunes Review poetry contest, judged this year by Jack Driscoll.

Ex-Multician, Fellow of The Royal Statistical Society, Douglas Clark has self-published books of his poetry with Benjamin Press since 1985 and currently has a list of five books and two pamphlets: the 1995 Selected Poems, the 1997 pamphlet Cat Poems and the University of Salzburg 1997 book Wounds. Since 1990 he has had over 40 poems published in the little magazines. My Web Pages include Douglas Clark's Home Page and Douglas Clark's poems.

Ronald Donn is from Corpus Christi, Texas, and works as an instructor at Louisiana Technical University (Ruston, LA). He has a master's in English Liberal Arts from Northeast Louisiana University (Monroe LA), where he did some editing for the school's literary mag. His publications include Spillway, Athena Incognito, Jones Ave (Canada). He lives in Monroe, LA.

Witold Gombrowicz (pronounced vee-told gom-bro-veech) was born on August 4, 1904 in Maloszyce, Poland into a well-to-do family belonging to the now defunct ziemianstwo [landowning nobility]. On graduating from an elite prep school in Warsaw, from 1922 to 1927 he attended Warsaw University, graduating with a Master’s degree in law. In 1933 he made a literary debut, publishing a collection of short stories, The Memoir of a Time of Immaturity; later he changed the title to Bacacai. In 1939, right before the outbreak of World War II, Gombrowicz went on a trip to Argentina, where he remained for twenty-four years. In 1963 he was awarded a Ford Foundation grant, which permitted him to leave for Europe. He spent the remainder of his life in Vence, in the south of France. In 1967 Witold Gombrowicz won the prestigious Formentor Prize, and a year later he was one of the main candidates for the Nobel Prize. A lifelong sufferer from asthma, he died of a heart attack on July 24, 1969.

Besides Bacacai, Witold Gombrowicz’s principal works - which have the well-deserved reputation of being extremely difficult to translate - include four novels (Ferdydurke, Transatlantyk, Pornografia, Kosmos), three plays (Ivona, Princess of Burgundia; The Marriage; Operetta), and a fascinating work in three volumes, unique and thus difficult to categorize, The Diary. Witold Gombrowicz is considered by many to be the most important Polish writer of modern literature.

Christopher Makosa was born on April 2, 1966 in Radom, Poland. In 1994 he translated, annotated and prefaced Witold Gombrowicz's collection of short stories, Bacacai, all of which cost him labor of about two years. In return for his exertions, and for reasons he explains at some length on his web site, his translation was suppressed, in 1996, by "impartial" and "expert" Yale University Press readers, as well as mysteriously "lost" by the first reviewer. Since then he has not been able to place Bacacai with an analogue publisher. Although he has challenged all of his critics, both privately and publicly, to prove, by honest and professional methods, that his translation is not excellent, nobody has yet dared undertake this apparently impossible task. The translation of "A Feast at Countess von Doff's" featured in this issue of Octavo presents yet another challenge to his detractors.  

Christopher Makosa lives on Lower East Side in New York.

Ric Masten was born in Carmel, California, in 1929. He has toured extensively over the last thirty years, reading his poetry in well over 400 colleges and universities in North America, Canada, and England. He is a well-known conference theme speaker and is a regular on many television and radio talk shows. He lives with his poet-wood carver wife Billie Barbara in the Big Sur mountains of California. He has 13 books to his credit.

Sam Rasnake has appeared in various journals and e-zines such as Poem, Literal Latte, and Switched-on Gutenberg. Most recently Pudding House published Religions of the Blood, a chapbook of poems, and Sow's Ear Press published Necessary Motions, a full length collection.

Sandy Shreve is the author of three books of poetry: Belonging, Sono Nis Press, 1997, Bewildered Rituals, Polestar Book Publishers, 1992 and The Speed of the Wheel Is Up to the Potter, Quarry Press, 1990. Her poems are widely antholgoized.

Don Taylor has a doctorate in English with a specialty in the Philosophy of Literature. Success in the construction business took him away from teaching from 1977 to 1991. He resumed teaching in 1991 and has taught at Wichita State University, Friends University, and Butler Community College. Taylor is now retired, which he has experienced as a clarifying release, allowing him to be his positively daffy self.