RITA BERNSTEIN is a reluctant traveler and thus takes most of her photographs close to her home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

CARY CLIFFORD lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and has exhibited her photographs most recently in New York, Pittsburgh, and Berlin.

RUTH CRUMP is a photographer living in Silver Spring, Maryland.

T. PAIGE DALPORTO is a photographer, poet, and songwriter who lives in Charlton Heights, West Virginia.

BILL EMORY has been a janitor, plumber, auto mechanic, and cat-scan technologist and has also taken photographs for more than thirty-five years. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

DERRICK JENSEN’s most recent book is titled As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial (Seven Stories Press). He lives in Crescent City, California.

BARBARA J. KLINE is a surrealist fine-art photographer who lives in the mountains of Idaho.

KAREN LANDMANN speaks twelve languages, including Sranan Tongo, the creole language of Suriname. She lives in New York City.

LYN LIFSHIN’s books of poetry include Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness, The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian (both Texas Review Press), and Another Woman Who Looks Like Me (Black Sparrow Press). She lives in Vienna, Virginia.

ALISON LUTERMAN makes a mean bowl of chili. Her secret? Black olives, mustard, and red wine. She lives in Oakland, California.

MEGAN MCNAMER prepared for a career in writing by studying ethnomusicology. “I like to write about geographies of ambivalence,” she says: “the liminal, in-between places where travelers meet their destinations.” Her essays have appeared in several anthologies and a variety of magazines, including Salon and Sports Illustrated. She lives in Missoula, Montana, and is currently at work on a book of essays.

SUSAN LIRAKIS NICOLAY is a photographer who lives in Sandwich, New Hampshire. She loves to learn new things and tries to follow the example of her mother, who got her PhD when she was seventy-six.

DAVID ROMTVEDT lives in Buffalo, Wyoming, where he has spent much of the past year building his house — digging the foundation, framing, insulating, hanging drywall, and now, finally, painting. His most recent book of poems is titled Some Church (Milkweed Editions).

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

CINDY SHAFER is a photographer living in Los Altos Hills, California.

SPARROW has moved back to Phoenicia, New York, where he lives with his wife, Violet Snow. He is still a Yankees fan, despite certain political misgivings, and is addicted to Sudoku, YouTube, and pretzels.

MAUREEN STANTON is a writer living in Maine. Her essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Creative Nonfiction and Fourth Genre. She talks almost as fast, and almost as much, as her mother.

GREGORY THORP’s favorite subject to photograph is corn. His work has been represented by Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, for thirty years. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

One of KATHERINE VAZ’s first published short stories appeared in The Sun, in 1988. Since then, her fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Glimmer Train, the Iowa Review, and the Antioch Review. She lives in Santa Ana, California, and is the author of two novels, Saudade (St. Martin’s Press) and Mariana (HarperCollins/Flamingo, UK). Her short-story collection Fado and Other Stories (University of Pittsburgh Press) won the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her story in the May 2002 issue is dedicated to her friend Mercedes Gomez, a musician who wrote a solo composition about steering a harp through traffic in Mexico City. The story's title was inspired by a child's drawing exhibited a decade ago at an art show in Laguna Beach, California.

ELLEN WALLENSTEIN is an artist and tarot-card reader who divides her time between New York City and Sherman, Connecticut. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute in New York.