My name is R. Zamora Linmark: I was born in Manila but raised in Honolulu, which explains why I speak and write in several brands of English. I am the author of the novel Rolling The R's and the poetry collections Prime Time Apparitions and the just-published The Evolution of a Sigh. I am currently on a sabbatical leave from poetry so I can focus on my novel about the hairdos of the eighties. Laundromats and I are, like, Sonny and Cher during their happy times. We are 2-4-1, shampoo with conditioner, etc. Believe it or not, one of my very first interviews was conducted at a laundromat. It was for Maganda, a Berkeley-based magazine, mainly run by Fil-Am Berkeley students. Why and how I and the interviewer ended up at a laundromat is self-explanatory. I had simply run out of underwear and needed to do laundry on the day of the interview. I tried to postpone the interview for another day but the interviewer, Christine Balance, suggested why not kill two birds with a single load. So she picked me up, drove me to a laundromat, and, during wash-rinse-spin cycle, interviewed me about the craft of writing. Then we took a quick break so I could transfer my Surf-smelling clothes into the dryer, and resumed the talk, which ended right before the buzzer.

Marie Carter: I grew up in Scotland in a small working-class town and from the earliest age I was fixated with books and writing, constantly hounding my mother to take me to the library. I moved to NYC in 2000 and began working for Hanging Loose Press, edited an anthology called WORD JIG: NEW FICTION FROM SCOTLAND which was published in 2003 and ran a Scottish reading series at the New York Public Library in 2004. I’ve admired trapeze artists for years but have always been unathletic and scared of heights. By learning trapeze I came to redefine myself. My new book THE TRAPEZE DIARIES is based on those experiences. Laundry Story: When I was a small girl my mother had a clothesline where she would hang laundry in the backyard. We had a cat who was quite the huntress and there was a crow who’d often visit our garden to torment our cat. One day the crow was sitting on top of the clothesline cawing at the cat who began climbing up towards the crow. As soon as the cat got 2/3 of the way to the top the crow flew over to the bird’s nest and continued taunting the cat who climbed back down the clothesline and started climbing the bird’s nest. She got 2/3 of the way up it before the crow flew back over to the clothesline. This back and forth continued for quite some time. Eventually, after I had exhausted myself laughing, I took pity on my cat who would not give up on her attempts to catch the crow even though it was obvious she would never win. I carried her back into the house. The next morning I could see the crow on top of the clothesline slightly hidden among my mother’s drying sheets that were flapping in the wind. He was waiting for my cat to arrive.

Indran Amirthanayagam: I write poems in English, Spanish and French. I believe in the cross- cultural encounter. Learned early from my parents to turn the other cheek yet keep writing poems on the face of the tyrant. My latest book is The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems. A portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated towards tsunami relief. Ask for it at your local bookstore or you can find it on line. Me gustaria que este espacio sea un lugar de encuentro para poetas de todo el mundo. J'invite a tous a lire des poemes et a faire des commentaires.

I began to use public laundries when I moved to New York, to East 4th Street in the scruffy, bathroom in the kitchen, Pyramid Club hopping days....At the time I realized I had to bring my socks to the local stream where instead of rocks to lay down clothes I was obliged to place them on benches and wait my turn while somebody else spun their week's whites dry. I would bring a poetry volume with my clothes and read and imbibe the starchy and powdered air (and look around a bit for a female with whom I could exchange a furtive glance or perhaps a few words about Constantine Cavafy.) Then I entered washing machine and later the dryer and closed my poetry volume and put it inside the hot and sweet smelling bag of newly-minted linen ready for the week and further chance encounters with poetry and its lovers.