Edith Abeyta is a Los Angeles multimedia artist who makes work out of the detritus of consumer culture. By combining trash she's gleaned off the streets of downtown Los Angeles into sculpture, quilts and extensive, community base collaboration, she exposes the ugly side of abundance in the beautiful objects she makes.

Rheim Alkadhi Rheim Alkadhi is an interdisciplinary artist who uses found objects in her work, and finds feigned objectivity a useful art-making strategy.  Her work has been shown in the U.S. and Canada; she lives on the East Side of Los Angeles.

In 2003 Ned Balbo received the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award and, in 2002, the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize. He has been a Pushcart nominee in poetry and nonfiction. In 2003, he was second runner-up in the William Faulkner/Pirate's Alley Creative Writing Competition for his previous Die Cast Garden essay "Paul is Dead, and We're All Listening: Rumor and Revelation, 1969." His poetry collection is Galileo's Banquet (Washington Writers' Publishing House, 1998).

Nicky Cacavas resides in Long Beach, CA, but spends nearly all his spare time attempting to tunnel his way to Munich, Germany. At the rate he is going, he will get there sometime during the next millenium. His photographs are currently in a show called Shelter: Coming Home at the Gallery Figueroa

William Conelly was raised in a military family. He resigned from the US Air Force Academy to study prosody with Edgar Bowers, first as a student at UCSB, then as a friend until the latter's death in 2000. He has worked a dozen different jobs in the service, financial and education sectors, always with a bias towards writing. Currently he is an adjunct professor of English at Westfield State College, Westfield, MA, on sabbatical in Warwick, England.

Joan Houlihan is editor-in-chief of Perihelion, a nationally known online poetry journal published by webdelsol.com and senior poetry editor for Del Sol Review.  She is author of Hand-Held Exectutions, Poems & Essays , the chapbook Our New and Smaller Lives from Black Warrior Review and writes The Boston Comment, a series of aritcles on contemporary poetry.  Her work has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. www.bostoncomment.com

Michael Row, Editor, really doesn't like to dirty his hands digging since he spends so much time chewing his fingernails down to the bloody quick. He will, however, stoop to picking through even well-soiled LP bins in search of the ever-elusive GLASTONBURY FAYRE 3-LP set on Revelation Records UK from 1971. Anyone got a spare copy they wanna part with?

Jane Satterfield's career as an archaeologist was significantly undermined by her dislike of dirt. Assignation at Vanishing Point, her second poetry collection, was just published by Elixir Press. She has received awards for her nonfiction essays, including the John Guyon Award in Literary Nonfiction and the Cuchulain Prize for Rhetoric in the Essay. Her essays, poems, and reviews have been published in the Antioch Review, American Voice, Crab Orchard Review, Indiana Review, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Pennsylvania English, The Journal, and elsewhere. A lyric essay on hunger is forthcoming in Seneca Review.

Allyson Shaw, Editor, is a writer and web designer who likes to get her hands dirty. She is a poetry editor for Del Sol Review and Perihelion. Her book of poetry, The Bon Bon and Love Token is forthcoming for Del Sol Press next year.

Laura Splan is a San Francisco based sculpture and installation artist. Originally from Tennessee, she relocated to the West Coast in 1991 to complete her Bachelor of Art at the University of California, Irvine. She recently received her MFA from Mills College in Oakland. Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at Southern Exposure, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and The Lab. Her upcoming exhibits include Mystery Ball at Headlands Center for the Arts and Ladyfest Los Angeles. In her spare time, she likes to knit and perform paraphysical experiments on her two cats. You can find more of her work at laurasplan.com

Jonathan Ward is a writer living in Echo Park, Los Angeles. This is his third contribution to DieCastGarden. Examples of his non-fiction writings on painfully obscure corners of music can be found at Perfect Sound Forever, and bobvido.com, which was developed with Allyson Shaw.