Jason Mashak and David OPrava

Jason Mashak: whose family names include Mashak, Bielicki, Tikal, and Strauss on his father's side, and Iverson, Hammond, Boze, and Bower on his mother's side, was born in southwest Michigan, where he was raised around factories, snow, and hotrods until moving to north Georgia at the age of 10. Once in Georgia, his grades went down because he couldn't understand his teachers. After mastering the southern tongue (stuck down and back yonder in the mouth), he picked up a guitar and imitated Keith Richards playing Allman Brothers hits. This eventually took him to Oregon at age 25 (as Seattle's scene was already long gone). Unfortunately, he wasn't punk enough for Portland, and decided to write poems about that, resulting in a need for solitude, which somehow took him to the former Czechoslovakia, where he now primarily watches the collapse of the US Empire on youtube.--------------------- David OPrava: David E. Oprava writes, because he has to. He is terrified of what will happen otherwise. It makes him prolific. He has been in over forty journals online and in print and his first full-length book of poems, VS., was released in October 2008 by Erbacce Press. When he isn't writing he is battling against his raging sobriety and trying to live up to the high moral expectations of husbandhood, fatherhood, and humanhood. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily succeeding.