Susan Yount, Editor and Publisher
Susan (aka Sissy) was born and raised on a 164-acre farm in Southern Indiana where she learned to drive a tractor, harvest crops, feed the chickens and hug her beloved goat, Cinnamon. Soon after receiving her BA from Indiana University in Photo-Journalism, she married a physicist and moved to Ohio. While attending Kent State University as a guest graduate, she worked at the largest flour mill in northeast Ohio where she kept those Accounts Receivables up-to-date (no small feat, that!). Recently moved, she and her husband built a home on the south side of Chicago with a view of the Sears Tower. In the middle of the upheaval she found time to give birth to a bouncy baby boy! She is the Editor and Publisher of Arsenic Lobster and works (for pay!) at the Associated Press. Having begun graduate studies in poetry at Columbia College in Chicago, she now balances her studies with work, her new home and her delightful baby. Only Mimi Mousy Tongue knows what Susan will be doing next and she's not talking. Her poetry has appeared in several print and online magazines including Elixir, Bathtub Gin, Wicked Alice, Verse Daily and The Chaffin Journal. Susan is a 2003 recipient of The Lynda Hull Memorial Scholarship in Poetry. In 2010 she was awarded first prize in the 16th Annual Juried Reading competition at The Poetry Center Of Chicago. In her spare (!) time she moonlights as the madame at the Chicago Poetry Brothel.

Lissa Kiernan, Poetry Editor
Lissa grew up in Athol, Massachusetts, home to the L.S. Starrett and Union Twist Drill tool factories. "Tooltown" also claimed the highest statewide rate of unwed teenage pregnancies. Wisely, her mother taught Lissa to play the piano just as soon as her fingers could reach the keys. Flutes followed. There was a year in Nashville where all she recalls is helping her father earn a degree in early childhood psychology. At the University of Michigan, she whistled relentlessly in white-walled isolation booths before retiring to Paris to recuperate. Eventually, she earned her BA in English from UMass, her MA in Media Arts from The New School, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast. She pays the bills by working as a Web developer. Twenty years ago, as proof of their undying destiny, her would-be husband Chris produced an L.S. Starrett micrometer caliper from his toolbox. They make use of it in a century-old townhouse in Brooklyn, which they attempt to renovate amidst a fluctuating number of felines. Between home improvement projects, she writes things that find their way into journals such as Redheaded Stepchild, Canary, MiPOesias, unSplendid, and Swell. Finally, Lissa is founder and director of the online poetry cooperative, The Rooster Moans.

Katherine Blackbird, Associate Editor
Katherine Blackbird teaches poetry and creative writing at Kent State University.

Dolly Lemke, Associate Editor
Dolly was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI where she attended an under-funded state college and worked various tiresome service jobs. After five years of “figuring things out”, she received a BA in English with a Creative Writing concentration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She recently completed a MFA in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago where she currently teaches freshman composition and works for the small feminist press Switchback Books. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Wicked Alice, Columbia Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2010, Horse Less Review, and Umbrella Factory. Interests include vintage clothes, thrifting, micro-brews, Ashtanga Yoga, and looking into becoming a librarian.

Lillian Bertram, Guest Editor
Lillian-Yvonne was raised in the shadow of numerous Buffalo Bills Super Bowl losses. No stranger to sudden heaping amounts of snow, she enjoys winter sports and eerie cloud formations. Often pressed for time, she writes the occasional poem, some of which have found themselves at the Indiana Review, Harvard Review, jubilat, Narrative Magazine, and other journals. She adores her cat, Hipólito Yrigoyen, and can be most readily found perfecting a recipe for blueberry-compote-filled lemon-vanilla cupcakes or hiking a trail. She'd be nowhere without Mom and Pops.

George Pichowsky, Webmaster
George grew up in California, moving to New York as a teenager. While living in Brooklyn, he helped raise two sons, worked and attended college. As a result of hard work and good luck, his entire forty-year career was spent as a computer programmer on Wall Street. Divorced, he is now retired and living in the Chicago area. Much of his time is spent managing his finances, fishing and playing online games with friends. Occasionally, he and friends will create small movies on their computers. He owns and maintains the Magere site where Arsenic Lobster lives. Comments about the site (not the poetry) may be sent to him at .