Beth Lisick is a writer and performer. She has published poems, essays, a short fiction collection, and also wrote a weekly nightlife column in San Francisco for eight years. Her stage and screen collaborations with writer/performer Tara Jepsen have yielded some uncomfortable moments. The most recent, a short film called Diving for Pearls, played this summer at gay film festivals in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles (and features some unattractive full frontal nudity.) She also runs the Porchlight Storytelling Series, likes to cook for her husband and son, and just went camping for the first time in 12 years. She likes camping, but is turned off by the amount of gear you need to do it. Her new book is called Everybody Into the Pool.

Bonnie Marson is a native New Yorker, longtime Tucsonan. She was an artist all her life - paintings, drawings and other media - with other careers on the side (for those adorable, steady paychecks!). A few years ago, she wrote her first novel, Sleeping With Schubert, about a woman who gets inhabited by the spirit of Franz Schubert, composer of the "Unfinished" Symphony. Random House published it in June 2004, Paramount holds the film rights, and Sony Classical released a companion music CD, and Bonnie is grateful for it all. She thinks of her journey from artist to novelist as a natural step along the creative continuum - all of it celebrating the storytelling tradition.

Teresa Dawn Driver: executive director of Tucson Poetry Festival, feminist poet, activist, pacifist, union leader, soapbox preacher, loudmouthed pagan, stage manager, daughter of Jody, wife of Jaison, Mother of Kira who dances and Ryan who drums and a four drawer file cabinet full of abandoned ideas.

Drew Burk is a co-founder and editor for the Tucson-based, hand-bound, literary magazine Spork (www.sporkmag.com) He has five books (other people's) to publish before he can finish his own multi-volume novel, Methylchloroisothiazolinone (le peripherale), which, all else notwithstanding, may just be out sometime next year. Or the next. Or the next.

Denise DeSio: Writer, photographer, teacher, webmaster, http://www.azscamp.com , community resource coordinator, domestic engineer, karaoke queen, lesbian, mother of two believes that her lack of fame and fortune is a direct result of an unfortunate congenital imbalance: too much talent/too little ambition. Denise has been caught trying to sneak extra minutes into her story in an effort to achieve her full FIFTEEN minutes of fame!

Kenneth Cahall stopped taking life seriously when Diff'rent Strokes went off the air. He's a swimmer, a world-champion daydreamer, and a wannabe at everything but maxing out credit cards, for which he is nationally known. He has shined more shoes than Mr. Bojangles, and has dated more women than his mother, who is not a lesbian but loves to bowl. He's the creator and animator of "Airhead", a 16mm short that once played on a wall somewhere in Tucson, Arizona to a rousing crowd of 8 tourists looking for the subway station.

Gwen Ray, a native of Lubbock, Texas, has been a puppeteer and storyteller in Tucson for more than 20 years. A performance artist who teaches in elementary schools and performs in a variety of venues, she enjoys incorporating an environmental twist into traditional stories as well as personal stories. "My stories are often based on my childhood experiences growing up on the plains of West Texas," said Ray, who also teaches workshops for adults and children. For more than 15 years, she has shared her love of puppetry with children enrolled in the Tucson Museum of Art School summer program. Her background includes professional training at the Puppet Centre and Norwich Puppet Theatre in England, L'Institut de la Marionnette in France, and Bread and Puppet Theatre in Vermont. She has been a solo performer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and has produced and directed children's television programming. She lives on the Santa Cruz, and in her spare time, she enjoys renovating old properties and raising tomatoes.

ODYSSEY STORYTELLING PHOTOS and BIOS