DOUG BEASLEY lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, in a small wooden house surrounded by trees, where he tends his Japanese gardens. He is a lover of late-night discussions and strong morning coffee.

MAUREEN BEITLER is a photographer and nurse living in New York City. She received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship for her photographs of Harlem.

ROSEMARY BERKELEY lives in Neptune Beach, Florida. She received an MFA in writing from Vermont College in 2001 and is at work on a novel about her experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer.

CAROL RIFKA BRUNT is originally from New York and now lives with her husband and three children in a small house on a hill in British Columbia, Canada. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of essays of which “Human Services” is the title piece.

MICHAEL CHITWOOD is the author of four books of poetry and has a collection of essays and stories titled Condition Reports forthcoming from Tryon Publishing. The wisteria that he transplanted from his grandmother’s yard has bloomed only once since he’s had it — in the spring following her death five years ago. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

BILL EMORY has been a dishwasher, janitor, plumber, HVAC repairman, auto mechanic, and CAT-scan technologist. He has also been a photographer for thirty-five years. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

SUSIE FORRESTER's photographs have been published in the Photo Review and Hope magazine. She lives in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

JEFFREY HERSCH is a photographer who has unloaded cod from fishing boats and mucked out horse stalls. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

ETHAN HUBBARD’s photos and writing in the August 2008 issue are from his latest book, Grandfather’s Gift: A Journey to the Heart of the World (Heron Dance Press). He lives in Chelsea, Vermont.

STEPHANIE JANTZEN is a photographer living in New York City.

KAREN KEATING is the director of Photoworks, Inc., a nonprofit photo-education program in Glen Echo, Maryland. She has traveled to Cuba four times and is working on a book of photographs of Cuban women.

Photographer JEAN-CLAUDE LEJEUNE lives in Bernardston, Massachusetts.

R.A. McBRIDE is working on a book of photographs and essays about San Francisco movie theaters. She lives in New York City.

PHILIP MIRKIN is a photographer living in Dove Creek, Colorado.

JANE MULLEN is the author of a collection of stories, A Complicated Situation (SMU Press), and has had work published in Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and the Oxford American, among other publications. She divides her time between Oxford, Mississippi, and West Cork, Ireland, the setting for her recently completed novel. Between them, she and her husband have four children.

A Zen practitioner for the past fifteen years, SEAN MURPHY is also the author of The Hope Valley Hubcap King, a darkly comic contemporary enlightenment story. The winner of the Hemingway Award for a First Novel, the book is to be released by Bantam/Dell in November 2002. Murphy is an MFA graduate of the Naropa University writing program. He teaches writing workshops in the U.S. and abroad and is an instructor in writing, literature, and film for the University of New Mexico in Taos.

JAIME O’NEILL writes regularly for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee. He hopes to continue writing and teaching for a long time, though he is significantly more than half finished. He lives in Magalia, California.

DION OGUST lives in Woodstock, New York, and is a staff photographer for the Woodstock Times. Her portraits of writers and musicians have appeared on book and CD covers.

ERIC RAWSON lives and works in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Commonweal, and the online magazine Slate.

EDWIN ROMOND was a high-school English teacher for thirty-two years and is now a visiting author in Pennsylvania and New Jersey schools. His latest book of poems is Dream Teaching (Grayson Books). 

SARA SAFRANSKY is a writer and photographer from Holyoke, Massachusetts. She's spent most of the past year traveling through Europe, working on organic farms in exchange for room and board.

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

MARVIN W. SCHWARTZ is a photographer who lives in New York City. His work is in the permanent collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

APRIL THOMPSON is a San Francisco freelance writer who covers environmental and community issues, travel, and spirituality. Her work has appeared in Hope, Natural Home, Via, and other magazines.

MARK TOWNSEND lives in Brooklyn, New York.