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).

CALEE ALLEN is a photographer who lives in South Lake Tahoe, California. She works part of the year as the maintenance coordinator at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where she can see the circle of flags marking the geographic pole from her window.

STEVE ALMOND’s most recent essay collection is titled Not that You Asked: Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions (Random House). He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife and their daughter, Josephine, who recently started walking and shows no signs of ever stopping. 

ERIC ANDERSON’s poetry was recently published at Conte Online. He still doesn’t have a title for his forthcoming collection of poems, and the situation is becoming desperate. He lives in Elyria, Ohio.

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.

RITA BERNSTEIN is a reluctant traveler and thus takes most of her photographs close to her home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

MICHELLE CACHO-NEGRETE lives in Wells, Maine, and her essays appear in The Sun’s new book The Mysterious Life of the Heart and in Thoreau’s Legacy, an anthology from the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. She teaches writing both in person and online and is recovering well from surgery, thanks to Dr. Jeff Thurlow.

LARRY CHAIT is a former research scientist who retired early to become a jazz drummer, only to find that he had no talent. He then took up photography, to which he is now totally devoted. He lives in Chicago.

ALAN CRAIG is the pseudonym of a writer living on the East Coast.

ROBERTO GUERRA lives in La Paz, Bolivia, where he is working on a project about coca farmers.

ERIK HOFFNER is a renewable-energy activist who works for Orion magazine. He lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

GINA KELLY is a photographer living in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.

GARY MATSON once appeared on television in New Orleans, Louisiana, dancing under the stars, wearing one orange and one yellow sneaker. He lives in Sunnyside, New York.

R.A. McBRIDE is the author of Left in the Dark: Portraits of San Francisco Movie Theatres, for which she received a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. She is a founding member of Point Blank, an experimental photography group in San Francisco.

BARBARA PLATEK is an author living in Ithaca, New York. She has been listening to people’s dreams as part of her Jungian psychotherapy practice for seventeen years.

HAL S. POPE is a photographer and videographer who lives in Columbus, Georgia. He’s currently working on a short documentary about the endangered Mississippi sandhill crane.

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.

LINDA SOLE had a winning photograph in the MILK (Moments of Intimacy, Laughter, and Kinship) competition, sponsored by New Zealand publisher PQ Blackwell. She lives in Bellac, France.

JOHN TAIT is an assistant professor of fiction writing at the University of North Texas and editor of American Literary Review. A Canadian transplant living in Denton, Texas, he has come to enjoy barbecue and Shiner Bock beer as much as he does back bacon and Molson.

DAVE WESTOVER is a freelance photographer and graphic designer who lives in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

ANGELA WINTER keeps finding those twenty pounds she lost. When not working at The Sun, she pores through cookbooks, obsesses over her cilantro-cashew chutney, and searches for the perfect tempeh reuben. She lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, but dreams of returning to Paris — for the falafel in the Marais district.