Andres J Laracuente (B.1982, US) is living the American dream. An advocate of the strange, his work, is often at unrest, aligning itself with video, photography, sculpture and performance. Engaged with the history of form and idea, working intuitively and conceptually, a common focus is on medium from popular culture as internalized by the individual. While currently concentrated on developing an acting and modeling portfolio, Andres Laracuente continues to "drop in" on unexpected places and spaces.
Andres J Laracuente is currently in Chicago studying at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He will be graduating with a BFA this year.
A selection of recent exhibitions include Melt in The Sun Freeze Underground: Basso and Raum Erweiterungs Halle, Berlin and Hell Rave Wave: Yukiko Kawase Gallery, Paris.
Title Theme From Never Home Alone, is a Christmassen performance featuring Light, Shadow, Song, the purr of a Bengal Tiger, and a six year old girl pretending to be Andres Laracuente. The Red Slay is back form the Orient with delicious Pear cider for all.

"As I cut each diamond, I imagine how a beam of light will strike it and dance from facet to facet within the stone." -Leo Schachter , master diamond artisan
(A Spectres Brilliance)

Joe Amato is the author of five books: Symptoms of a Finer Age (poetry, Viet Nam Generation, 1994); Bookend: Anatomies of a Virtual Self (criticism, SUNY Press, 1997); Under Virga (poetry, Chax Press, 2006); Industrial Poetics: Demo Tracks for a Mobile Culture (criticism, University of Iowa Press, 2006); and Finger Exorcised (poetry, BlazeVOX Books, 2006). Chapters of his memoir, Up from Ellis Island, have been published in The Iowa Review, Square One, and Voices in Italian Americana; and his essays, poetry and digital art have been published in Antennae, 88, Chain, Crayon, Jacket, Bombay Gin, Denver Quarterly, Mandorla, New American Writing, Postmodern Culture, MiPOesias, Notre Dame Review, Nineteenth Century Studies, The Iowa Review Web, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and electronic book review. Two of his screenplays, Bear River and High Country (coauthored with Kass Fleisher), advanced to the semifinal round of the 2003 Chesterfield Writer's Film Project fellowship competition, hosted by Paramount Pictures; and the screenplay Yellow Medicine, also with Kass Fleisher, advanced to the semifinal round of the 2006 Nicholl Fellowships competition, hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has just finished a novel, Big Man with a Shovel. He currently teaches writing and literature at Illinois State University.

Kass Fleisher is the author of The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History (nonfiction; SUNY Press, 2004); Accidental Species: A Reproduction (conceptual memoir; Chax Press, 2005); The Adventurous (forthcoming from Factory School in 2006); and Talking Out of School: Memoir of an Educated Woman (forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press in 2007). Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Denver Quarterly, Mandorla, Notre Dame Review, Antennae, Bombay Gin, Postmodern Culture, Z Magazine, American Book Review, and electronic book review, among other journals, and her fiction has been awarded annual prizes from The Dickinson Review and Plainswoman. Her screenplays (with Joe Amato), BEAR RIVER and GOOD FENCES, achieved semifinal status in the 2003 Chesterfield Writer's Film Project fellowship competition (hosted by Paramount Pictures), and YELLOW MEDICINE (also with Joe Amato) has achieved semifinal status in the 2006 Nicholl Fellowship competition (hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). She is an Assistant Professor of English at Illinois State University in Normal.