Ron Charach is a known internationally for his poems on medical themes. His work is featured in the U of Iowa's anthology: Blood & Bone: Poems by Physicians, 1998.

Cooper Esteban's poetry has appeared in the Quarterly and Chelsea, and in the online magazines elimae, East Village Poetry Web, and 5_Trope. His essays and reviews appear in web del sol and elimae under the names cooper renner and b. renner

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), four plays (Ivona, Princess of Burgundia; The Marriage; Operetta; History), 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.

Mike Kopacz is a former carney, construction boss, and entrepeneur who now makes a living as a technical and legal consultant for the federal government in D.C. He has been published in American Way, North American Review, and numerous other small magazines.

Sharon Kourous lives in a suburb of Toledo, Ohio, and teaches high school English. As a single-parent, she did not get around to writing until the youngest went off to college: not enough time or emotional space. Since then, writing has been central to her life, and she has placed over 200 poems in journals such as American Poets and Poetry, The Formalist, The Lyric, Piedmont Literary Review, and others. She has won several awards and has a promise from Singular Speech Press for a book of her work to come out next year. She is a member of the on-line poetry workshop, Zeugma.

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 "Stefan Czarniecki's Memoir" featured in this issue of Octavo presents yet another challenge to his detractors.  

Christopher Makosa lives on Lower East Side in New York.

M Sarki gets a living selling brick in Kentucky and has published poetry in Archipelago, Borderlands, Blue Penny Quarterly, elimae, 5-Trope, George Jr., and The New Orleans Review.

Kenneth Sherman was born in Toronto in 1950. He has a BA from York University, where he studied with Eli Mandel and Irving Layton, and an MA in English Literature from the University of Toronto. While a student at York, Sherman co-founded and edited the literary journal WAVES. From 1974-1975 he traveled extensively through Asia. He began his teaching career in 1975 at York's Atkinson College. He is a full-time faculty member at Sheridan College where he teaches Humanities and Communications; he also teaches a course in creative writing at York University. In 1982, Sherman was writer-in-residence at Trent University. In 1986 he was invited by the Chinese government to lecture on contemporary Canadian literature at universities and government institutions in Beijing. In 1988, he received a Canada Council grant to travel through Poland and Russia. This experience inspired several of the essays in his book Void and Voice (1998). Sherman lives in Toronto with his wife, Marie, an artist, and their two children.