We are Tisa Bryant, Miranda F. Mellis and Kate Schatz, three writers, educators and editors who live in Queens, San Francisco and Oakland, respectively. We met at Brown University, where we all received MFAs in Literary Arts. Each of us brings a range of book-related experience to the table, from distribution to editing to retail. We started the Encyclopedia Project in 2004; soon after, we decided to start our press, Encyclomedia. In August 2006, the wonderful Joanna Howard joined our editorial team--so now there are four!

TISA BRYANT

Tisa Bryant was born in Tucson, AZ, and raised in Massachusetts.  She takes great delight in the crosses she has to bear in this life (the cross-cultural, cross-genre, the cross-reference, and the cross-country) and tries to make good use of all the subject-positions she occupies.  She writes fiction, poetry and lyric essays, often all at once.  In 2004, she earned an MFA from Brown University, and was named Zora Neale Hurston Scholar to Naropa University that same year.  Her writing has appeared in The Believer, Bombay Gin, Chain, Curve, Hatred of Capitalism, Girlfriends, Long Journey Home, Mosaic, Short Fuse, XCP, and in gallery exhibits for visual artist Laylah Ali.  She is the author of a chapbook, Tzimmes, from A+Bend Press.  Her novel, Unexplained Presence, will be published Fall 2006 by Leon Works Press; her fictional treatise on fictional films, [the curator], is looking for a home.  She teaches at St. john's University. She lives in Queens.

MIRANDA F. MELLIS

Miranda F. Mellis is the author of the novellas Restless (BeeHive,  2003, temporalimage.com), and Cutaway (Calamari Press, forthcoming, calamaripress.com). Various of her works have appeared in various pages including those of Context, American Book Review, Post Road, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Cabinet, McSweeney's, The Believer, The Kenyon Review and the Pocket Myths 'zine series. She teaches writing and literature (most currently at California College of Arts). Raised in San Francisco, she was once an aerialist in the tiniest circus in the world, The Turnbuckles (Sister Spit Tour, '98). She is a cofounder of The Encyclopedia Project and the chamber-noir trio My Invisible.

KATE SCHATZ

Kate Schatz is a writer, editor, and educator who lives in Oakland, CA. She received an MFA in Fiction Writing from Brown University’s Literary Arts Program in 2005, and a double B.A. in Women’s Studies/Creative Writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2001. She is currently at work on Rid of Me, a book of short stories to be published by Continuum Press in Spring 2007 as part of the acclaimed 33 1/3 series. Her various writings have been published in Denver Quarterly, West Branch, BlitheHouse, LTTR, Bitch!, Kitchen Sink, Roux, Red Wheelbarrow, and The Annual. She was awarded the 2004 Francis Mason Harris Prize and the 2005 John Hawkes Memorial Prize in Fiction. Kate likes weather when it’s good and celebrities when they’re bad.