Artist Bios

Liz Gonzalez’ poetry, fiction and memoirs have been published widely and will soon appear in or recently appeared in “Caguama, Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles,” “Plum Ruby Review,” “The November 3rd Club,” and “Open Windows: An anthology of five Poetry in the Windows Projects.” “Beneath Bone,” a volume of her poems, was published by Manifest Press in 2000. Her recent awards include the Arts Council for Long Beach's 2005 Professional Artist Fellowship, a fiction-writing grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation and a residency at Hedgebrook: A Retreat for Women Writers. She teaches creative writing in private workshops and through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. For more information, see:

Larry Colker has co-hosted the weekly Redondo Poets reading with Jim Doane at Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach, CA, for eight years. His poems have appeared in “Los Angeles Review,” “RATTLE,” “Spillway,” “ONTHEBUS,” “Solo”, “Pearl,” “Cider Press Review,” “Blue Satellite” and elsewhere in print; on the Web at “The Cortland Review,” PoetrySuperhighway.com, “King Log” and Poeticdiversity.com; and in anthologies from Tebot Bach, Valley Contemporary Poets and Poeticdiversity.com. In 2003 he published a chapbook, “What the Lizard Knows: New and Selected Poems.” Larry spent his formative years by the Ohio River in Huntington, WV. Following studies in Romance languages, early childhood education and psycholinguistics, for 12 years he taught preschool, high school and university classes. For the last 20 years he has worked as a technical writer, writing mostly documentation and training materials for corporate software. He resides in San Pedro, CA.

Andrea Quaid is a poet. She currently attends UC Santa Cruz as a Ph.D. candidate in literature and travels home to Los Angeles every other month for Rhapsodomancy, a reading series she co-hosts with Wendy C. Ortiz.

Rafael F.J. Alvarado was born in Hollywood in 1965 and has been writing poetry since he was ten. His Granduncle, Luis Cardoza Y Aragon, was a famous Guatemalan poet who was a colleague of Pablo Neruda. Rafael wishes every day to write as well as his granduncle. His grandmother, Laura Cardoza Muller, was also a published poet and a big influence on his writing. He has had trouble with the letter M: so far, romances with two girls whose names begin with the letter M have ended badly. He is hoping the M new girl works out. He has bought books on how to treat her right, but has found them to be badly written. He is currently writing poems about a recent stretch in jail. He has run the L.A. and San Francisco marathons and has recently completed the Long Beach Marathon. Rafael believes there's a Zen to running; he writes about what's in the mind of the runner during long runs. He is the co-publisher of Gatsby, a new arts and literary magazine that will debut in 2007. He will also debut two reading series this coming July: The Daisy Standard at Dutton’s Books in Beverly Hills and Cardozas Palabras at the Antigua Cultural Coffee House in El Sereno.

Jared M. Barbick was born in California in 1976. Based in Palos Verdes, his travels are closely linked to his painting and exhibition practice. Paintings such as “Paper Dolls” and “Bebop” illustrate the artist’s broadness of exploration, addressing both the Holocaust and the emergence of the bebop era. He is credited for contributing a new way of seeing the often-painted musical culture of the world. He is also credited for his exploration of alternative mediums that are usually inflexible and fragile. He is currently seeking an appropriate gallery to show his artwork. His painting “Solitude in Sound” has been recognized in Copeland’s Famous New Orleans Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. Jared has a private and exclusive clientele mostly comprised of musicians and business professionals. During his early artist career, Barbick was accepted and given a scholarship to Disney’s art school - California Institute of the Arts - in Valencia. Barbick currently works as a teacher of students who have Aspergers Disease as the primary math, science, and general art teacher. Barbick received his bachelor’s degree in English from UCSB and his Masters Degree in Education from Pepperdine University.