Co May Born “Nguyen Phuc Dan Thanh” in Di Linh (Central Vietnam), Co May grew up in Hue. She emigrated to the Netherlands in 1992 and is currently living in Switzerland and working as a Chemical Engineer. Her poetry has appeared in the collection Lan Ban (2000) with several other authors. She is also a regular contributor to the Viet Literary magazine Van Hoc Nghe Thuat on the Internet at http://saomai.org).

Than Nhien Born “Ton That Thien Nhan” in Hue (Central Vietnam) on January 9, 1962, Than Nhien emigrated to the US in 1990. He currently lives in Washington State and writes poetry, short stories and plays. He has two poetry collection published — Vuc & Gio (1999, with several other authors) and Da Giac (2002) from which “Fetus” was extracted. His work has appeared in numerous Vietnamese literary magazines inside and outside Vietnam, both on the Web and in traditional print medium.

Nguyen Duc Son was one of the noted poets of the Vietnamese 60's generation. Today he has a reputation as an eccentric. He shuns civilization almost completely and lives like a hermit in the highlands of Vietnam, giving rise to the nickname “Son Nui” [“Son of the Mountains”]. Some think he's irreverent and weird. Others think he's a genius. Everyone seems to agree that his writing style is unique and his works can be exceptionally brilliant. He rarely comes to the city. He is the only person these days who dares to visit Tue Sy regularly.

Tue Sy is a Buddhist monk and a Vietnamese dissident who at one point was on death row and only was released from jail in 1998, after tremendous pressure from international groups such as Human Rights Watch, combined with the Vietnamese government's attempt to appease the US in order to obtain normal trading status which became a reality on December 11, 2002. He's a scholar and intellectual who once was Dean of Van-Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon. Although he's not technically under house arrest, Tue Sy is still under constant surveillance by the secret police.