POE BALLANTINE does not need bifocals, he says, as he slides his glasses to the tip of his nose to read. He is the author of the true-crime book Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere, due out in 2012, and the subject of the documentary Poe Ballantine, A Writer in America (copies of which can be purchased for $13.99, shipping included, from Al Saperstein, P.O. Box 111, Earleton, Florida, 32631). 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’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.

DANE CERVINE is a therapist who directs the child and adolescent programs for Santa Cruz County, California. His poem “The Ukelele” was a finalist for the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Competition.

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 and photography teacher living in Berlin, Germany.

CARLOS GUSTAVO is based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and is currently traveling the southeastern U.S. His photographs have been published in B&W and Oxford American.

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  LIMBERT has self-published two books of photographs, American Tour and state fair, both available from Blurb.com. 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 a writer and editor who lives in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. She writes about religion, spirituality, and parenting for such magazines as Buddhadharma, Mothering, and Geez.

MARK SMITH-SOTO is the director of the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the longtime editor of International Poetry Review. His most recent book of poetry is Any Second Now, and he translated Fever Season: Selected Poetry of Ana Istarú.

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

SPARROW has moved back to Phoenicia, New York, where he lives with his wife, Violet Snow. He is still a Yankees fan, despite certain political misgivings, and is addicted to Sudoku, YouTube, and pretzels.

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 and filmmaker from Austin, Texas.

COLE THOMPSON is a fine-art photographer living in northern Colorado. The subjects of his photographs range from the beaches of Oregon to the Nazi concentration camps of Poland. 

MARK TOWNSEND lives in Brooklyn, New York.

THOMAS TULIS  lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

JERRY N. UELSMANN’s most recent book of photographs is The Mind’s Eye, and his work is in the permanent collections of art museums worldwide. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.