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 photographer who also works in the film industry. She 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 retired from his job as a pipe fitter and welder, then returned to work, and now he thinks almost every day about retiring again. He lives in Highland, Indiana.

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 and edited a small community newspaper for a decade before selling it to pursue his passions, one of which is photography. He lives on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula with his wife, Sue.

CLEMENS KALISCHER was born in Bavaria and has been taking photographs for sixty years. He lives in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he runs the Image Gallery and maintains Image Photos, an archive of more than a half-million pictures.

ANNA BELLE KAUFMAN is a former silversmith and set designer who now works as an art psychotherapist with AIDS and cancer patients. She lives in Gualala, 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’s second book of poems, See How We Almost Fly, was just published by Pearl Editions. She lives, teaches, and throws parties with her husband in Oakland, California.

LINDA McCULLOUGH MOORE lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she divides her time between reviewing books for Books & Culture and buttonholing strangers on the street to ask if they know anyone who might care to publish a collection of short stories.

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 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’s photographs have been published in Focus, Popular Photography, and Photo Life. He manages private vocational colleges for a living and raises llamas at his ranch in Laporte, Colorado.

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