KENT ANNAN and his wife Shelly Satran, work for a grass-roots development organization in Haiti. He’s disappointed that the four-month avocado season in their area is coming to a close, but that means mango season is drawing closer.

ANTLER is the former poet laureate of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and author of Exclamation Points Ad Infinitum! (Centennial Press). His poems have been included in the anthologies Poets against the War (Nation Books) and Poetic Voices without Borders (Gival Press). He lives in Milwaukee.

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.

RITA BERNSTEIN is a former civil-rights lawyer who fantasizes about being a veterinarian or a neuroscientist. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

JENNY BITNER is a San Francisco poet turned fiction writer and visual artist. Her short story “The Pamphleteer” was selected for the Best American Non-required Reading 2002. Currently she’s writing a novel titled Notes to a Potential Lover. Her writing has appeared in Kitchen Sink, Mid-American Review, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Men’s Health.

JEAN HAY BRIGHT is the author of Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life and Proud to Be a Card-Carrying, Flag-Waving, Patriotic American Liberal (both BrightBerry Press). She lives in Dixmont, Maine.

JAMES CARROLL has been taking photographs for forty years. He lives in New York City.

PEMA CHODRON is a fully ordained Buddhist nun and the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan monastery for Westerners. She is the author of several books, including No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva (Shambhala).

PERRY DILBECK lives in Locust Grove, Georgia, and teaches at the Art Institute of Atlanta. His photographs chronicle the disappearing lifestyle of small farmers in the South.

SUSI EGGENBERGER was a registered nurse for twenty-two years before becoming a photographer. She lives in Arundel, Maine.

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

SHERRI L. HOPPER currently lives in the desert Southwest. She really wants to go home, only she doesn’t know where home is anymore.

JAMES KULLANDER lives in New York’s Hudson Valley and is editor-in-chief of print and online publications at Omega Institute.

MATT NIGHSWANDER is a photographer who spent six years as an international photo editor at the Associated Press and ten years playing in a band you’ve never heard of. He lives in Chicago.

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

DAVID SHANNON lives in Seattle, Washington, and can often be found roaming the mountains or in the midst of protesting crowds. His photo in the January 2005 issue was taken in Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand. His next project is to try to beat his wife in a game of Scrabble.

JENNIFER SHAW is a fine-art and freelance photographer living in New Orleans.

HELEN M. STUMMER is the author of No Easy Walk, Newark, 1980-1993 (Temple University Press). As a photographer she has been documenting the lives of the poor for more than twenty-five years. She lives in Metuchen, New Jersey.

IRA SUKRUNGRUANG is a first-generation Thai American born and raised in Chicago. His work has appeared in Witness, North American Review, and River Styx. He is coeditor of What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology (Harcourt) and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology, out this month from Harvest Books. He teaches creative writing at State University of New York in Oswego.

JACQUELINE VEISSID is a photographer living in Los Angeles.

JENNIFER WARBURG is a photographer and political activist living in Durham, North Carolina.

THERESA WILLIAMS can pick up pens and pencils with her toes, whistle out of the side of her mouth, and spell most words correctly most of the time. She is the author of a novel called The Secret of Hurricanes (MacAdam/Cage). She teaches literature and creative writing at Bowling Green State University and lives in Bradner, Ohio.

MADELINE WILSON teaches photography at a private high school and is an avid sea kayaker who has completed two trips down the Hudson River. She lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.