POE BALLANTINE believes that singing, laughing, and memorizing beloved poems should take the place of antidepressants. He lives in Chadron, Nebraska.

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

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.

WILLIAM CARTER has been taking photographs since the 1960s, and his work has been acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum. He is also a clarinetist and serves as chair of the San Francisco Jazz Foundation. He lives in Los Altos Hills, California.

DANE CERVINE lives in Santa Cruz, California, where he is chief of children’s mental health for his county. He found his calling when he quit his job at a tomato cannery and started working at a psychiatric hospital. His latest book of poetry is The Jeweled Net of Indra (Plain View Press).

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).

MIKE CONNEALY put photography aside for thirty years to make a living and raise a family. Now retired, he is taking pictures again, mostly with old cameras. He lives with his wife in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

J’AIMEE CRONIN is a photographer who lives in New York City.

REINHARD GORN is a commercial photographer, but he prefers to photograph strangers on city streets. He lives in Berlin, Germany.

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

DAVID BRENDAN HOPES is the author of A Childhood in the Milky Way (Akron University Press), which was nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. His latest volume of poetry, A Dream of Adonis, is forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

STUART KESTENBAUM is the author of two books of poems, Pilgrimage (Coyote Love Press) and House of Thanksgiving (Deerbrook Editions). He lives in Deer Isle, Maine.

MICHAEL V. LIMBERT is a photographer who plays with the band Fortune & Maltese. He lives in Royal Oak, Michigan.

ROBERT LLEWELLYN is a photographer who lives in Earlysville, Virginia.

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

BETHANY SALTMAN is working on a book titled JesusGirl5: Americans Convert to Christianity. She lives in Phoenicia, New York, and teaches literature and writing at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

MARK SMITH-SOTO was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Costa Rica, and now lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. He writes poems in English but adds and multiplies in Spanish. He is editor of International Poetry Review and director of the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

MARY SPALDING is an English instructor and PhD student at Potomac State College of West Virginia University. She lives in Frostburg, Maryland.

SPARROW lives in Phoenicia, New York. He is running for president of the United States for the fifth time (on the Sudoku-for-All Party ticket) and is the only candidate to support a maximum wage. His latest book is called America: A Prophecy (Soft Skull Press).

JAN STURMANN grew up in South Africa. Before becoming a photographer, he made his living as a left-handed tree planter, a vegetarian ranch hand, and a numerically challenged carpenter. He lives in Oakland, California.

DEBRA SUGERMAN is a photographer who lives in Austin, Texas. Her documentary film Dear Mr. President, about a group of teenage Israeli and Palestinian girls on a road trip across America, has been shown at film festivals worldwide.

COLE THOMPSON is a photographer who raises llamas on a small ranch in Laporte, Colorado.

MARK TOWNSEND lives in Brooklyn, New York.

THOMAS TULIS is a photographer living in Atlanta, Georgia.

JERRY N. UELSMANN lives in Gainesville, Florida. His most recent book of photographs is Other Realities (Bulfinch Press).