ELLERY AKERS lives on the northern California coast and is the author of the poetry collection Knocking on the Earth (Wesleyan University Press) as well as a children’s novel, Sarah’s Waterfall: A Healing Story about Sexual Abuse (Safer Society Press).

RYAN ANDERSON is a photographer and archaeologist. He lives in Oceanside, California.

LISA CALLAMARO is a Hollywood agent who lives in Beverly Hills, California.

BELLA MAHAYA CARTER’s writing has been published in Calyx and Earth’s Daughters. She is also a trained choreographer and dancer who works with children. She lives in Studio City, California.

ROBERT P. COOKE is finally retired and lives with his wife in Highland, Indiana. He’s been writing poems and sending them to friends instead of sending them out for publication.

DIANE COVINGTON is an award-winning journalist who bought a run-down organic apple farm to save it from developers. She has since mastered mowing, fixing broken irrigation pipes (including those she has broken while mowing), and climbing trees to harvest apples. She lives in Encinitas, California.

SYLVIA DE SWAAN was the founding director of Sculpture Space in Utica, New York, and is currently a visiting instructor at Hamilton College.

NORMAN FISCHER is founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation and former co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. His latest book of poetry is I Was Blown Back (Singing Horse Press). He lives in Muir Beach, California.

GARY GREEN is assistant professor of art at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. His work has been published in Blind Spot and Words & Images.

THOMAS HYDE owned a small community newspaper for a decade before selling it to pursue writing and photography. He lives with his wife on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula.

CLEMENS KALISCHER was born in Bavaria, Germany, and has been taking photographs for more than sixty-five years. He lives in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he runs the Image Gallery.

ANNA BELLE KAUFMAN was a costume and set designer in her first life. When her son died of aids at age five, she became an art psychotherapist working with aids and cancer patients. Her writing has been published in Calyx and Psychotherapy Networker, and she lives with her husband and their dog in Sebastopol, California.

VALERIE ANN LEFF is the author of the novel Better Homes and Husbands (St. Martin’s Press). She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

CHRISTOPHER LOCKE’s essay, "Possessed," [April 2007] is from a memoir-in-progress called Speaking in Tongues. He hopes that a month in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, will help him complete the book. If not, he says, at least he’ll be able to indulge in some pulled-pork tacos and a little mescal.

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

LINDA McCULLOUGH MOORE is doing headstands and sending up flares to herald the publication of her new collection of stories, This Road Will Take Us Closer to the Moon, a book that she says comes highly recommended by the author. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

JACQUELINE MOREAU is a photographer who works as a special-education teacher during the school year and as a fire lookout at a national forest during the summer. She lives in White Salmon, Washington, with her son, a horse, a cat, and chickens that lay blue-green eggs.

G. ALAN MYERS likes to cook up a mean spaghetti Bolognese when he’s not working on new portraits. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

SUSAN LIRAKIS NICOLAY is a photographer who lives in Sandwich, New Hampshire. She loves to learn new things and tries to follow the example of her mother, who got her PhD when she was seventy-six.

GARY OLIVEIRA is a photographer who lives in Seattle, Washington, and teaches art at Green River Community College. His work has appeared in Culturefront and Public Culture.

JAN PHILLIPS’s photographs have been published in the book God Is at Eye Level: Photography as a Healing Art (Quest Books). She lives in San Diego, California, where the light is good.

CLAIRE SIDES lives in Raymond, Washington, where she takes photographs, delivers mail, and hikes with her two dogs. She finds a penny almost every day.

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.

TIM STEGMAIER is a photographer and co-owner of Life Force, which makes raw, organic energy bars and breads. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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. 

STEPHANIE UMEDA is a photographer who lives in Brooklyn, New York.