VELVY APPLETON is a photographer who plays guitar in a Brazilian dance band. He lives with his wife and daughter in Fairfax, California.

BOB BAYLES is a photographer who lives in Van Nuys, California. He likes to incorporate quotes from movies in conversation, which leads his family to playfully accuse him of being unoriginal. “Either that,” he says, “or they actually believe ‘I’m very shallow and empty, and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say’ (Annie Hall).”

BEN BOBLETT is a family physician who also surfs and takes photographs. He lives in Half Moon Bay, California.

ARNIE COOPER sometimes wonders if teaching English as a second language might be hurting his ability to write. Bombarded by misspellings, misplaced modifiers, and mangled syntax, he fights to maintain his own knowledge of English. Luckily, none of the magazines he writes for have detected a problem. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

PEG DÍAZ is a photographer who lives in Barstow, California.

STEVE DONOSO organizes events that point towards our awakening awareness. He lives in mid-coast Maine and also directs the International Film Festival of the Spirit.

NOELLE GABERMAN is a photographer who lives in Occidental, California. She takes photographs of weddings to make money and of her son to capture his smile.

CARLOS GUSTAVO lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His photographs have been published in Harper's, Elle, and Vogue.

J.R. HELTON lives in San Antonio, Texas, and is the author of Below the Line (Last Gasp Books), a memoir about his experiences as a set painter on more than twenty films. His friend R. Crumb, the legendary comic-book artist, did the cover art for the book.

NANCY HILL is working on a photography project about fools and has a closet full of jester and harlequin costumes. She lives in rainy Portland, Oregon.

JACK HITT is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and the public-radio program This American Life. His work recently appeared in The Best Science Writing 2006 (Harper Perennial). He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

CLEMENS KALISCHER signed up for his first photography course in 1947 and has been taking pictures ever since. He lives in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he has run the Image Gallery for more than thirty years.

GINA KELLY is a photographer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

GARY MATSON’s photographs have appeared in American Photo and Rolling Stone. He lives in Sunnyside, New York.

BETH MAYER likes to write fiction and essays while standing up. Her work has appeared in the Threepenny Review and the Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies. She lives in Lakeville, Minnesota.

ANNA KAUFMAN MOON’s photographs have been published in Newsweek, Life, and the New York Times. She lives in Cobleskill, New York, where she grows peas, lettuce, and chives.

PAMELA HOPE MOSELEY lives in Chicago, Illinois, and is learning digital photography. She has been a Montessori elementary-school teacher for twenty years.

VICTORIA PATTERSON recently won the Snake Nation Press prize for her nonfiction. She lives in South Pasadena, California, and has worked as a waitress for most of her adult life.

JIM RALSTON has been commissioned to write an original play for a baseball conference in November at Frostburg State University in Maryland. He lives in Cumberland, Maryland.

DOUG RHINEHART is an adjunct photo instructor at Colorado Mountain College in Aspen.

BRUCE HOLLAND ROGERS teaches fiction writing in the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program in Washington State. He lives in Eugene, Oregon.

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

CAROL SAMOUR’s photographs have been published in Potomac Review and Shots. She lives in Germantown, Maryland.

MARK SMITH-SOTO lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he serves as director of the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His translation of Ana Istarú’s selected poetry, Fever Season and Other Poems, is due out this fall from Unicorn Press.

KIM STAFFORD directs the Northwest Writing Institute. His most recent book is A Thousand Friends of Rain: New and Selected Poems (Carnegie-Mellon University Press). He lives in Portland, Oregon.

CARROLL ANN SUSCO’s writing has been published in Gulf Coast and the Beloit Fiction Journal. She teaches English at Halifax Community College and lives in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.

COLE THOMPSON manages private vocational colleges and lives on a small ranch in Laporte, Colorado. His work has been published in Popular Photography, Photographer’s Forum, and B&W.