ANDREW BOYD is an author, humorist, and twenty-year veteran of creative campaigns for social change. He’s written two books of “serious humor” — Daily Afflictions and Life’s Little Deconstruction Book (both W.W. Norton) — and is at work on two more: one about the irony of travel when there’s no “elsewhere” anymore, and another about the “odd challenges men face in a post-feminist world.” He lives in New York City with his wee laptop.

NICK CARPENTIERI is an avid traveler who likes to take the occasional photograph. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

JAMES CARROLL lives in New York City.

MEGAN BUCHANAN CHERRY lives with her family in Prescott, Arizona. She was married in October 2008 after twelve years of single motherhood. The bride wore a bracelet of hummingbird feathers.

JANE CHURCHON lives in Sacramento, California, where she works as a nursing supervisor, though lately she’s been hankering for ramen noodles and peanut butter and is considering going to graduate school to ensure a steady diet of them. Her work has appeared in Berkeley Fiction Review and American River Review.

RALPH A. HUGHES is a poet, cellist, great-grandfather, and former sheep farmer. He lives in Oakham, Massachusetts.

DALE S. JEWETT’s father gave him a camera when he was fourteen, and he has been taking photographs ever since. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

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.

ANDREW LAWLER is a displaced Southerner living in rural Maine whose writing has appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic, and Science. When not practicing serenity at airport baggage carousels, he’s learning to accept black flies and use a chain saw. 

PAT MACENULTY is the author of four books, all published by Serpent’s Tail Press. Her latest novel, From May to December, is based on her experiences running a drama workshop at a women’s prison. She is currently collecting essays for an anthology on parental caretaking.

GARY MATSON lives in Sunnyside, New York. He recently received an e-mail from his ex-wife, with whom he had lost contact, after her daughter from another marriage told her, “That guy you used to be married to? I think he’s got a photo in The Sun.”

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.

ANGELA RYDELL lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and teaches poetry in the University of Wisconsin’s continuing-studies department. She has played drums in both a punk band and the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra. Her poetry has been published in Poets & Writers, Prairie Schooner, and Alaska Quarterly.

SY SAFRANSKY is editor and publisher of The Sun.

J.T. THOMAS’s photographs have been published in the New York Times and National Geographic Adventure. He divides his time between New York City and Paonia, Colorado, where he and his wife grow heirloom tomatoes and seventeen acres of hay.

KEVIN THOMAS ekes out a living as a photographer in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

COLE THOMPSON lives in Laporte, Colorado, where he raises llamas. His photographs have been published in B&W, Focus, and Photo Life.

JERRY N. UELSMANN lives in Gainesville, Florida. His most recent book of photographs is Other Realities (Bulfinch Press).

LEAH VINLUAN has taken photographs in Nepal, India, Japan, Korea, and Morocco. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

ALISON WRIGHT’s photographs have been published in National Geographic Traveler, Time, Outside, and O, the Oprah Magazine. She is the author of three books of photographs, including The Spirit of Tibet: Portrait of a Culture in Exile (Snow Lion Publications). She lives in San Francisco.

RACHEL YODER was the Ohio State sewing champion when she was in the seventh grade. Now she lives in Tucson, Arizona, teaches writing at Prescott College, and is the managing editor of the literary journal Alligator Juniper. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Cimarron Review, and Word Riot.