ELLERY AKERS is a writer, artist, and teacher who lives in Point Reyes Station, California. She is the author of Knocking on Earth (Wesleyan University Press) and winner of five national poetry awards.

KENT BEHRENS is a photographer who lives in Omaha, Nebraska. His work is currently being exhibited at Omaha’s Botanical Center.

BEAU BRASHARES was in Berlin when the wall was torn down, in Prague for the Velvet Revolution, in San Francisco when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit, and in New York City on September 11, 2001, and he didn’t take photographs of any of it. He lives in New York City. 

LESLEY CECCHI is a photographer who lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

CRAIG CHILDS lives with his wife and two sons in the West Elk Mountains of Colorado. He recently completed a descent of an uncharted river in Tibet: 180 miles of deep gorges, white water, and villagers aghast at his and his companions’ presence. He also enjoys long walks, the longest of which so far was 120 days in the Grand Canyon. His books include House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization across the American Southwest (Little, Brown and Company) and The Way Out: A True Story of Ruin and Survival (Back Bay Books).

SUSI EGGENBERGER was a registered nurse for twenty-two years before becoming a photographer. She lives in Arundel, Maine.

BILL EMORY has been a dishwasher, janitor, plumber, HVAC repairman, auto mechanic, and CAT-scan technologist. He has also been a photographer for thirty-five years. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

JENNIFER ESPERANZA is a photographer who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and collects vintage buttons. Her work has appeared in Mothering, Santa Fe Trend, and New Mexico Magazine.

GLORIA BAKER FEINSTEIN is the author of Among the Ashes and Convergence (both Yellow Bird Press). She lives in Kansas City, Missouri, and has recently become an empty nester.

SUSIE FORRESTER's photographs have been published in the Photo Review and Hope magazine. She lives in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

JAMIE HOGAN is a photographer who lives in Westfield, Massachusetts.

SUE HUBBELL is the author of A Country Year and A Book of Bees (both Mariner Books), and her work has appeared in Smithsonian, the New Yorker, and Time. She lives on the coast of Maine and has been an academic librarian, a labor organizer, a draft counselor, a commercial beekeeper, and a farmer.

DERRICK JENSEN’s most recent book is titled As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial (Seven Stories Press). He lives in Crescent City, California.

BRENDA MILLER is the author of Season of the Body (Sarabande Books) and has received four Pushcart Prizes. She serves as editor-in-chief of the Bellingham Review and is associate professor of English at Western Washington University.

ORAH MOORE is a photographer who observes loons from her kayak. She sells her images at her store, Haymaker Card and Gift, near her home in Hyde Park, Vermont.

SONDRA PERON is a photographer who prefers using vintage cameras, especially a Brownie Hawkeye from the 1940s. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

BRIAN PETERSON is a photographer who lives in Lower Gwynedd, Pennsylvania.

JOHN ROSENTHAL lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His book of photographs is called Regarding Manhattan (Safe Harbor Books).

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

SYBIL SMITH has been published in Dos Passos Review, Nimrod, the Harvard Review, and the MacGuffin. She lives in Norwich, Vermont.

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.

KAREN TWEEDY-HOLMES is coauthor of Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos (No Voice Unheard). She lives in New York City, although she vanishes into the Southwestern desert at every opportunity.

APRIL WILDER’s fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, Southwest Review, and PRISM International. She’s currently working on a novel called I Think about You All the Time, Starting Tomorrow. She has recently moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where the people are so nice she’s not sure she trusts them. By way of warning, a co-worker pulled her aside and said, “Listen, people are just nice here. You’d better get used to it.”