ELLEN BASS’s poetry books include The Human Line and Mules of Love. She teaches in Pacific University’s low-residency mfa program and lives in Santa Cruz, California.

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.

TOM BECKER’s latest photography project centers on the county fairs of northwest Iowa. He lives in Orange City, Iowa.

BRIAN BUCKBEE divides his time between Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Missoula, Montana. His short story in this issue is from a book he is completing titled Dear Dipshit: Letters to My Dumb, Future Self. His work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Mid-American Review, and Shenandoah.

MICHELLE CACHO-NEGRETE lives in Wells, Maine, and her essays appear in The Sun’s new book The Mysterious Life of the Heart and in Thoreau’s Legacy, an anthology from the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. She teaches writing both in person and online and is recovering well from surgery, thanks to Dr. Jeff Thurlow.

WILLIAM CARTER’s latest book of photographs is Causes and Spirits. More than 150 of his prints are in the permanent collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. He lives in Los Altos Hills, California.

ALAN CRAIG is the pseudonym of a writer living on the East Coast.

DIANNE DUENZL loves to photograph foggy, dreamlike landscapes, which are rare where she lives, in the bright glare and drought of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

DUNCAN GREEN recently got married for the first time at the age of fifty-three. He works as a bicycle advocate for the transit agency in Olympia, Washington.

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

TRICIA HILL lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and dabbles in photography. She admits her first-grade teacher was correct that she’s a “worry-wart,” but she no longer believes that she will develop warts all over as a result.

JASON LANGER’s photos have appeared in American Photo, Life, and Vanity Fair, and his work is represented in the Sir Elton John permanent collection, the Sir Mick Jagger permanent collection, and Yale University Art Gallery. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

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

ALAN MASS is a photographer who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

JULIE McCARTHY is a freelance photographer living in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She says that she fully intends to die with camera in hand — just not anytime soon.

JULIE REICHERT writes, teaches, and makes movies in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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).

JOHN ROSENTHAL lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His book of photographs is called Regarding Manhattan (Safe Harbor Books).

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

CARLA SHAPIRO lives in Chichester, New York. Her photograph in the December 2004 issue is of her grandmother.

CHIP THOMAS works as an Indian Health Service physician at a remote clinic on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. In 1993 he earned a Guinness World Record with two others for cycling twelve thousand miles from the northernmost point in Africa to the southernmost point in nine and a half months.

HARRY WILSON’s photos have appeared in Fifth Wednesday Journal, Fourteen Hills, and Alligator Juniper. “In other words,” he says, “I am an unknown photographer.” He lives in Bakersfield, California.

ANGELA WINTER keeps finding those twenty pounds she lost. When not working at The Sun, she pores through cookbooks, obsesses over her cilantro-cashew chutney, and searches for the perfect tempeh reuben. She lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, but dreams of returning to Paris — for the falafel in the Marais district.

BILL WITT provides volunteer photo services for several nonprofit organizations and drives a truck for the Northeast Iowa Food Bank once a week. He is the author of Orchids in Your Pocket: A Guide to the Native Orchids of Iowa and Enchanted by Prairie. He lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa.